“Within the first two pages, you know, without a doubt, that Sugar Cage is the genuine article. And that feeling stays with you up to the last, glorious page. . . . If writing is a gift, then Connie May Fowler must have been bestowed with the gift of ten muses. I’m amazed at the breadth of humanity she writes about, the uncanny way she captures the rhythm of inner lives: a reluctant seer of future tragedies, a disappointed wife, a Haition caneworker, an abandoned young boy, a philandering but loving husband, a dying intellectual, a grieving widow and a merry one, a soldier facing death, and a little girl who is haunted by the ghosts of her parents’ past. She weaves this unlikely community of characters into a mesmerizing story, brimming with magic, humor, and always sympathy, showing us the characters’ loneliness, their prejudices, and their circumstantial connections to one another. And just when we think that love and hope have failed them all, we realize we were wrong. They have been saved–only God and mambos know how–bound and uplifted by the same dreams of humanity. And then we know what Connie May Fowler knew all along: This is a story about all of us.” — Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club
“Reading Sugar Cage is like falling under a powerful spell. Echoes of Zora Neale Hurston can be heard in this incantatory prose.” — Lee Smith, author of Fair and Tender Ladies
“Here is a wonderful book by a wonderful writer. Sugar Cage is a true original, filled with life on every single page.”– Alice Hoffman
“Sugar Cage is a haunting chorus of Southern voices, varying in age, sex, and color, but creating a rich and vibrant harmony that lingers long after the final page. A warm welcome to this talented new novelist!” — Elizabeth Forsythe Haley
“Sugar Cage is one of the most accomplished, haunting fictional debuts since Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.” — Atlanta Journal Constitution
“To read Connie May Fowler’s Sugar Cage is to be a child, sitting on the bottom porch steps on a hot summer evening, listening to the grown-ups talking. . . . Hold quiet, save it all to sort through later, but don’t miss a single word.” — Kansas City Star
“Fowler has a trusting and attuned ear. Her characters are right on the money, and their simple, lush, infuriating voices roll along on the pride, fear, sadness, alienation, struggle and uncertainty that ended Southern innocence and isolation at the beginning of the civil rights movement and the start of the Vietnam war.” — Miami Herald
