In the Time of the Butterflies

By: Julia Alvarez

Narrated by: Noemi de la Puente, Alma Cuervo, Bianca Carnacho, Melanie Martinez

It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of General Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It doesn't have to. Everyone knows of Las Mariposas: "The Butterflies".

Now, three decades later, Julia Alvarez, also a daughter of the Dominican Republic and long haunted by these sisters, immerses us in a tangled and dangerous moment in Hispanic Caribbean history to tell their story in the only way it can truly be understood: through fiction. In this brilliantly characterized novel, the voices of all four sisters - Minerva, Patria, Maria Teresa, and Dede - speak across the decades, to tell their own stories, from hair ribbons to gunrunning to prison torture, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo's rule.

©1994 Julia Alvarez (P)2006 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Though murder, torture, and imprisonment are ever-present, she wisely choses to focus on the personal lives of these young wives and mothers, full of love, beauty, and, especially, hope." ( Library Journal)

Frustrating Narration

The narrator of the youngest sister was infuriating. Even after the girl was no longer 10 years old and a grown woman in jail, the narrator still sounded like a little girl. I almost couldnt finish it.
Also the switches between sisters included different formats (two of the sisters were their narration in first person, while the youngest sister's story was told through journals), and I believe a forth sister's story (the main character) was told in third person in the past? It was a bit confusing and didnt really work in my opinion. More distracting than anything.

Beautiful story and narration

This is one of my favorite audio books in a long time. The narration (done by several different people) was fantastic, the story and writing drew me in the entire time. The prose is at the same time rich and beautiful, but also simple and easy to follow.

The truth is...

Would you listen to In the Time of the Butterflies again? Why?

I would to remember parts I might have missed.

What other book might you compare In the Time of the Butterflies to and why?

I can't think of any comparison.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

Having several different narrators for each sister was confusing at times, but interesting too.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No.

Any additional comments?

A book that opens a dorr to a forgotten part of the past.

interesting

There was a lot going on in this book and I don't know a whole lot about the history, but it was refreshing to hear about these places and the Spanish woven throughout. Growing up visiting some of these places in the summer with my family, I could picture a lot of it in my mind. It was really interesting to learn about their personal lives and I could imagine my own aunts and grandmothers saying the same types of things.

Top 5 books of all time for me

I read this book in high school and fell in love with it. Literally one of my favorite books of all time. The sisters were so brave and I wish more people knew their stories.