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When Katie Wakes: A Memoir

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Anyone who's ever wondered why women stay in abusive relationships will find answers here. The author tells a shocking and harrowing story of a sick relationship and how she found her way out after allowing her self-loathing to hold her prisoner for so long. 'When Katie Wakes' should be required reading for anyone who suffers from debilitating depression and poor self-esteem.

In the past Connie May Fowler has shared her beautiful words with us through her incredible novels, but this time she shares her heart and soul as she writes about her years of physical and emotional abuse. What courage it took for her to write this, letting everyone not only understand but feel the pain she lived. It amazed me that she was able to write about the terror and the sordidness of her life without leaving out the details and without turning it into a slimy expose of her experiences. Don't misunderstand, she is very open, not sugar-coating these experiences, but her way of expressing them is remarkable. Katie, her faithful dog, gets us through her story just as she got Connie through those years or abuse. We always know that no matter how horrible it gets, Katie will be there for her. Connie May Fowler's story will inspire you. This is wonderful work!

Connie is such a gifted author - I've read every single thing she's written and eagerly awaited this new novel. I wasn't even slightly disappointed. When Katie Wakes is a beautiful and poetic written presentation of Connie's experiences in living with and escaping from a violent man, woven around her history of being the daughter of a battered woman and a child abuse survivor. As you can well imagine, the book is filled with TRUTH. It is a survivors story written by someone with extraordinary writing ability. It's also just a GREAT READ - from beginning to end you feel your heart pounding right along with Connie and find yourself wanting to hug Katie and grab Mika. At the end you will rejoice with her and for her....

When you get right down to it, authors like Connie May Fowler are not much different than the rest of us. Fowler bears the scars of a horrific childhood and early adulthood, one strewn with the wreckage of a shattered self-image fueled by the alcoholic abuse of her mother and the degradation of a hideous relationship with an older man. She, as have many of her readers, has suffered through despair thick enough to reduce her to attempted suicide and has faced the depths of self-abdication so profound that she began to absorb the very evil identity her tormented partner imposed on her.

What makes Fowler different from us, however, is language. In her hands, words make anguish palpable, sadness tangible, struggle imperative. As an author, Fowler is able to make sense of her life, and, in so doing, help us make sense of ours. "When Katie Wakes" may well be the most brutally coarse and ugly memoir you will ever read, but, at the same time, one of the most beautiful and impassioned pleas for individual integrity and indomitability ever composed. It is nothing less than a masterpiece.

Though Ms. Fowler credits her adoption of a loyal and loving dog, Katie, as the symbolic act of reclamation and reaffirmation of life, she sells herself far short. The grandchild and child of abused women, the child Fowler becomes the target of her drunken mother's rage. The Fowler children become adept actors, hiding the shame of family disgrace and brutality under the veneer of achievement. Keeping verbal assaults invisble, preventing others from recognizing the constant physical beatings absorbed by Mama, Connie's family life resembled "smoke and mirrors, deception and shame." A "wall of silence" shrouded suffering. As a child, Connie received sustenance from words and books, and her resultant triumph as an adult vindicates her choice. Her older sister, however, absorbs and internalizes the viciousness of her home, and, consequently, develops anorexia as an adult.

In a remarkable self-portrait, Fowler describes a wretched adult woman, unloved, unlovable, disgusting and repulsive. Her self-hatred is "untainted and unhinged." She believes herself "so ugly" that only an abusive, impotent, failed radio celebrity would be willing to love her. Yet, there is not a single note of self-pity in this wrenching memoir. Fowler reminds us that her mother's life, obliterated from a childhood rape, transcends her own in loss. Mama was "an angry woman who believed life had let her down. And it had." From disappointment to the target of her own husband's physical abuse, Fowler's mother recirculates and intensfies the pain, deliberately deflecting it on her children.

As a young woman, Fowler has not escaped her mother's imprint. Indeed, her chosen partner encapsulates her mother's jagged opinion. Tense is irrelevant when Fowler hears herself described as "stupid," or "an ungrateful whore," or a "lousy excuse" of a lover or daughter. When she hears her mother decry her existence, "I wish...I had died the day you were born," Fowler must come to grips with an essential life choice: descent into emotional self-immolation or ascent into a struggle for life and affirmation.

"When Katie Wakes" bravely portrays Fowler's battle for identity and wholeness. Her steadfast determination to "take responsibility for my own happiness, for my own sense of self-worth" is the best medicine for any person struggling to make sense of inner turmoil and despair. When she proclaims her need to discover "what my placer in the world should be," she speaks for any person on the cusp of a life-altering decision searching for the courage to embrace life's potential. This emotion-laden memoir is eloquent testimony to the ability of one person to wrestle life from death, hope from despair, the future from the past.

Quite often, the question is asked WHY does a woman stay in an abusive relationship, and the misguided answer is that she likes being abused and deserves it. In this memoir, Connie Fowler answers the question that I've often wondered myself. She shows in a very clear, understandable, and engaging way the recipe for a battered woman--low self esteem and self loathing. She tells how she identifies with an abused and unwanted female dog, Katie, and how they help each other through tough times. Her story is written in a way that it seems she's speaking directly to the reader, so that I cried and rejoiced along with her. Her abuser is portrayed in a way that is not sympathetic to him and shows without sugar-coating his unforgivable abusiveness, but manages at the same time not to go overboard and make him seem like an unbelievable monster. Despite his terrible acts, he still comes off as human and believable. Reading it, I could feel Connie's pain, insecurity, and fear, and read quickly, eager to see her find her sense of self and escape the terror and misery she was living in. This is a well-written story with a meaningful message.

Connie May Fowler's memoir of how she endured and escaped domestic violence is brutally honest and well-written. I could not lay down this book; it is compelling to the last word. Fowler lets the reader take a ride in her mind in a kind of you-are-there recounting of her childhood experience living in a violent household and of her gradual realization that she no longer has to serve the violent narcissist with whom she lives. This is an amazing book. The rest of her books are fiction and they are wonderful, too.

I read this book immediately after reading Fowler's "Before Women Had Wings". "When Katie Wakes" flowed quite smoothly from "Wings" and clarified some of the author's real-life struggles that were revealed in "Wings". A terrific, yet heartbreaking story she tells in "When Katie Wakes". I couldn't put this book down. A disturbing story though, in that it took me until the end of the book to realize why Fowler couldn't find the inner strength to leave such an abusive, dangerous and destructive lover. A must-read for those who enjoy a revealing and instructive story on the agonies of an abusive childhood and the devastation it can wreak.

Fowler writes truthfully and beautifully about true life for battered women. It takes courage to bare one's soul and she does it remarkably well in a book that should appeal to the mass media. People who are always asking "why does she stay?" would do well to read this book and get some education.
As a survivor who finally left after almost 12 years, (taking my six children with me)her thoughts were exactly like mine! I caught my breath reading them!

There's no question Connie May Fowler is a gifted story teller and extremely talented writer. Some passages are so searing and full of truth I've gasped when reading them. Unfortunately, the story she tells here is not fiction. I won't go into the plot because other reviewers have.

But I will say that this book will open up the eyes of readers who wonder why rape and domestic violence can damage people so deeply. In telling her story, Fowler goes further - also showing how 'teasing' and discrimination against someone because of the appearance of their face can cause deep and life-lasting scars. So far, the latter is a problem barely touched on by authors and psychologists.

Read this book with an open mind, and you'll find her story underscores how cruelty, shaming and bullying can almost blow out the flame of a promising human being before she even gets a chance to realize her own talent.

Conversely, this book demonstrates how kindness and compassion can help a suffering soul survive and even bloom.

Fowler is never pitiful and pathetic, and even when the most degrading acts are done to her, she remains a person with dignity.

Free from cruelty and shame at last and embraced by love, the real Connie Fowler emerges in the end.

Connie May Fowler's, "When Katie Wakes" is masterful glimpse into the soul of a battered women. I could not put this book down once I started and I finished it in an afternoon. A heartfelt account of one women's journey from both inner and outer torments to wakefulness and a sort of freedom, I would recommend this book to anyone. Fowler's easy writing style opens the door for us to descend easily into the hell that is home to the battered woman. Often wondering exactly what is was that kept a woman from mentally walking away from her abuser when she could physically do so, Fowler's insight has put the answer into perspective and I will never have to ask that question again.