<B><P>A <I>Kansas City Star</I> Best Book of the Year<BR><BR>"Brilliant, meditative, and full of surprises, wisdom, and wonder."—Ann Lamott, author of <I>Imperfect Birds</I></B> <P>"I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won’t look at them until after I’m gone." This is what Terry Tempest Williams’s mother, the matriarch of a large Mormon clan in northern Utah, told her a week before she died. It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock as it was to discover that the three shelves of journals were all blank. In fifty-four short chapters, Williams recounts memories of her mother, ponders her own faith, and contemplates the notion of absence and presence art and in our world. <I>When Women Were Birds</I> is a carefully crafted kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question: What does it mean to have a voice?