Most novels Marge Piercy has written feature female protagonists struggling to make places for themselves on their own terms in a wider world that privileges males, and privileges females when they are linked with males, most notably by marriage. Fly Away Home, thus, has much in common with The Longings of Women (1994), and with many of Piercy's poems. Moreover, it explores terrain travelled frequently by female fiction authors who, like Piercy, were first published in the late 1960s, and shortly thereafter. These include: Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Erica Jong, Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, and, later, Ann Beattie.