25th Anniversary Edition
"A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.€ --St. Petersburg TimesÂ
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 Le³nidas 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, MarÂa Teresa, and the survivor, Ded©--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 art and magic of Julia Alvarez€s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression.