When Katie Wakes

By Connie May Fowler
Doubleday, $23.95
ISBN 038550201X

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A battered woman's story laid bare

She's smart, she's talented, she's pretty. Why doesn't she leave him? Connie May Fowler's new book, When Katie Wakes, explores just that question -- the puzzling problem of why clever women with lots going for them stay with abusive men.

Fowler, author of Before Women Had Wings, tells her own story, holding nothing back. She is a straight-A student, her teachers' golden girl and a promising magazine editor. She interviews interesting celebrities, then goes home to a domestic partner who tells her she is hideous and boring and beats her. He is 30 years her senior, a has-been Tampa media personality who is never named, and he not only allows Fowler to pay all their bills, he also plunders her savings account.

Fowler traces her acceptance of domestic violence back to an abusive childhood. Her father terrorized her mother who, in her turn, verbally and physically assaulted her children. When Fowler realizes that her domestic partner is basically a substitute for her mother, she takes a huge step in acquiring a sense of autonomy.

Fowler also lays bare the terrible insecurity she felt as a result of having a malformed jaw and buck teeth. In some dark compartment of her psychology, she feels she doesn't deserve a better relationship. And yet, Fowler's tale has moments of redemption that cancel out at least some of the dark horror. It begins with the title character, Katie, who turns out to be a black Labrador retriever. Fowler rescues her from an abusive situation that mirrors her own. Together, the two create between them a tiny community of love that enables both to overcome their pasts and hope for a better tomorrow.

To call When Katie Wakes a page-turner would be an understatement. There's something so raw and compelling about this book that, even as you wonder why Fowler doesn't get help sooner, you can't tear through it fast enough. Part of the story's intensity comes from the point of view: it's told in first and second person. Throughout, Fowler addresses her former partner as "you." In the end, the reader feels she has read something as personal as a letter or a diary meant to purge the writer of demons. Her daring stylistic device also allows Fowler the last word in the relationship: "You did not destroy me."

Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.