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

  • A stunningly lyrical firsthand account of a life spent hunting, studying, and living alongside caribou.

  • The 13th installment in the New York Times best-selling series asks: What if Tiana made a deal that changed everything?

  • In a compelling, richly researched novel that draws from thousands of letters and original sources, bestselling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph—a woman who kept the secrets of our most enigmatic founding father and shaped an American legacy.

  • Combining Zitkála-Šá’s childhood memories, her short stories, and her poetry, American Indian Stories is the origin story of an activist in the making, a remarkable woman whose extraordinary career deserves wider recognition.