description: On a deserted mountain road in the Dominican Republic in 1960, three young women from a pious Catholic family were assassinated after visiting their husbands who had been jailed as suspected rebel leaders. The Mirabal sisters, thus martyred, became mythical figures in their country, where they are known as Las Mariposas (the butterflies). Three decades later, Julia Alvarez, daughter of the Dominican Republic and author of the acclaimed How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, brings the Mirabal sisters back to life in this extraordinary novel. Each of the sisters speaks in her own voice, beginning as young girls in the 1940s, their stories vary from hair ribbons to gun-running to prison torture. Their story is framed by their surviving sister who tells her own tale of suffering and dedication to the memory of Las Mariposas. This inspired portrait of four women is a haunting statement about the human cost of political oppression, and is destined to take its place alongside Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Allende's The House of the Spirits as one of the great 20th-century Latin American novels.
language: English
title: En El Tiempo De Las Mariposas
titlecomplete: En El Tiempo De Las Mariposas
characters: Minerva Mirabal de Tavarez, Maria Teresa Mirabal de Guzman, Patria Mirabal de Gonzalez, Bélgica Adela Mirabal de Reyes
genres: Fiction, Historical, Spanish Literature, Book Club, School, Adult, Classics, Novels, Adult Fiction, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 69326
places: Dominican Republic
awards: awardedAt: 757411200000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction
publisher: Topeka Bindery