Title: In the Time of the Butterflies
Description: 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.
Subjects: Fiction, Women revolutionaries, History, Historia, Revolucionarias, Ficción, Novela histórica, Reading Level-Grade 11, Reading Level-Grade 10, Reading Level-Grade 12, Fiction, historical, Fiction, biographical, Dominican republic, fiction, Sisters, fiction, Large type books, Fiction, historical, general, American fiction, Revolutionaries, Martyrs, Political corruption, Murder, Women rebels, Sisters, 18.06 Anglo-American literature, Novela
Places: Dominican Republic, Ojo de Agua (Salcedo, Dominican Republic), La Vega (Dominican Republic), San José (Dominican Republic), Higüey (Dominican Republic), San Francisco (Dominican Republic), Monte Cristi (Dominican Republic), Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)
People: Patria Mirabal (1924-1960), Dedé Mirabel (1925-2014), Minerva Mirabal (1926-1960), María Teresa Mirabal (1935-1960), Enrique Maribal (1892-1953), Mercedes Maribal (1897-1981), Pedrito González (1917-1972), Jaimito Fernández, Manolo Tavárez (1931-1963), Leandro Guzmán Rodriguez, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), Victor A. Peña Rivera, Rufino de la Cruz (1923-1960)
Time periods: 1930-1994