Connie May Fowler

Before Women Had Wings

  • Before Women Had Wings

  • In 1965 Bird, christened Avocet, aged six, is living with her family in a Florida citrus grove. Daddy and Mama, who run a general store, fight frequently and drink too much; Bird and her older sister Phoebe are beaten equally frequently. Daddy is eventually found dead in his car; Mama and the girls leave the grove and move into a trailer in the grounds of a motel outside Tampa. Bird, against Mama's wishes, makes friends with Miss Zora, a black woman in a neighbouring trailer. Miss Zora is a kindly white witch, whose wisdom and herbal remedies provide a mainstay in Bird's difficult life. Bird runs away to the city to escape her mother's cruelty, and meets a gentle biker who brings her home. Mama finally agrees to get help for her alcoholism, and Miss Zora takes Bird and Phoebe to live with her at her home in South Florida.

Connie May Fowler is an essayist and screenwriter as well as the author of four novels: Sugar Cage, River of Hidden Dreams, Before Women Had Wings, a paperback bestseller in the USA which was made into a successful film by Oprah Winfrey and was winner of the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award, and Remembering Blue.

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.