In December 2003, Luleta Brown experienced one of life's worst personal tragedies: her healthy unborn son died unexpectedly, four days before his official due date. She was told it was a "vague" mishap.
The arrival of Luleta's son was to have been the miraculous fulfillment of a long-awaited dream. The grief was profound, unlike any other grieving over death that she had ever experienced (and she had grieved over death many times).
The subsequent days and weeks were a struggle; many times she questioned her proven resiliency and deep-rooted coping skills. As much as she tried, she could not seem to get to the point of total acceptance of this tragedy. She refused to accept that her life could be put through such upheaval for no reason; she did not believe fate had the right to do that.
After an arduous battle, Luleta made the choice to create a reason; she had what she can only refer to as an epiphany -- the experience of an insight -- to write this book. While doing so, she discovered that the process of writing the poems was helping her to confront emotions she had not yet confronted; it felt like a cleansing process. Luleta was seized in a writing frenzy; she wrote all the time, practically non-stop. Many times, she thought she had covered all the essential areas, but then an important scenario would present itself, out of the blue, to be included; for example, "The Most Natural Question in the World" and "Norman." Some topics are approached in a direct and candid way.
The poems in All Angels Have Wings explore the gamut of emotions that Luleta experienced and struggled with. It was truly a journey through grief to hope and to finally embracing life again in areal way.