What Is Otherwise Infinite
Citizens by Treaty

In the Time of the Butterflies

Set in the Dominican Republic during the waning days of the Trujillo dictatorship of the 1960s, this extraordinary novel tells the story the Mirabal sisters–four women who opposed Trujillo, and became immortalized as Las Mariposas, “The Butterflies”.

It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful 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 Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas–“The Butterflies.”

In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters–Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé–speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from hair ribbons and secret crushes to gunrunning and prison torture, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human cost of political oppression.

More Adult, Non-Juvenile Books

  • Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper’s farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times [...]

  • In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

  • Memory Piece, Lisa Ko’s highly anticipated second novel, is a gripping exploration of friendship, art, and ambition that reflects the complexities of American culture while posing essential questions about the future. Following the lives of three teenagers—Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng—over several decades, the story delves into their evolving definitions of success and creativity in a rapidly changing world.

    Read More about "Memory Piece"...