A Million Fragile Bones by Connie May Fowler

☺☺☺☺☺

In A Million Fragile Bones, Connie May Fowler has brought the beauty and lyricism of her fiction writing to the world of memoir. What is even better for this reader, she has done so in order to bring forward a topic of great importance that has been shoved to the background of the recent past – the effects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Disclaimer – I know Connie May Fowler personally. She has taught several writer’s workshops in which The Amazing Ms. D participated.

Connie May Fowler was born and raised on the coasts of Florida, first in St. Augustine, and then, after the death of her father, in Tampa. In the mid 1980’s she returned to St. Augustine. Several years of living in Kansas made her yearn for Florida and the ocean, so she came back home. She was also looking for connections to her father, who had died when she was just 6 years old.

After several years in St. Augustine, Ms. Fowler was still feeling unsettled, and while driving across the northern Gulf Coast of Florida, she stumbled across a house for sale on a spit of land called Alligator Point. She knew immediately she had found her home.

The first two-thirds of A Million Fragile Bones are a wonderful and engaging description of Ms. Fowler’s life. She brings the full force of her fiction skills to bear. Whether it is describing her reaction to the abuse received at the hands of her mother;

…No matter the violence or ridicule, write everything down because even at six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, a child knows the power of words.

            Yes. Unending avalanche. Worlds spawned from consonants and vowels, syllables and phrases. Words upon words – prayers for the hopeless, prayers for the beaten, prayers for the poor, prayers for the fatherless, prayers for the two girls who wished their mother dead, prayers for a mother who Appalachian childhood had been so flamed with cruelty, rising from the ashes was never an option – piled up all around me, but I kept writing.(p. 21)

Or the peace and joy she achieved spending her days among the plants and animals that inhabit Alligator Point and her life:

Perhaps all of us exist in a perpetual migratory state. Our minds are wandering to where they need to be at any given moment – a happy memory, the right word, a daydream. Our hearts, too, surprise us with sudden love, sudden hate, needs and desires we did not know we possessed until we feel that telltale plumpness rise in our chests like fresh bread. (p. 93)

The beauty of prose that inhabits this book are a rare find in a memoir. It is worth reading A Million Fragile Bones for the feelings of love and joy written about in prose that just took me out of myself during these sections.

But that is not all Ms. Fowler has to offer. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, owned by BP, exploded and caught fire. This began what is probably the worst ecological disaster in U.S. history. For almost 90 days the well spewed close to 1 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day.

It is in this last third of A Million Fragile Bones that Ms. Fowler’s writing truly amazes. She conveys the initial fear of listening to news reports as it becomes clear that everyone has been lied to about the seriousness of the situation. Lied to by BP and by the federal government. She writes through the anger that develops as it becomes harder and harder to get real information from BP or the authorities. The anger that grows as she realized that there is a huge coverup going on. She presents the utter devastation as living on the Gulf harder and then impossible. The number of dead animals begins to grow exponentially, while her own health suffers due to the presence of oil and dispersant in the environment.

A Million Fragile Bones is a must read. In this new political age, it has become easy to forget or ignore the disasters of the past, even as they continue to affect us today.