In the Time of the Butterflies

It is November 25, 1960, and three sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of the dictatorship of General Rafael Le?onidas Trujillo. It doesn't have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas--the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters--Minerva, Patria, Mar?ia Teresa, and the survivor, Ded?e--speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo's rule. Through the artand magic of Julia Alvarez's storytelling, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage, love, and the human cost of political oppression--