Hello Friends!
This month I’ve been reading “In The Time Of The Butterflies” by Julia Alvarez. It was my local book club’s pick for May, however, I was not able to participate but I picked it up at the library anyways.
The book talks about the lives of the three Mirabal sisters who were prominent figures in the Dominican Republic revolution during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. “In the Time of the Butterflies” was originally published in 1994, and was later adapted into film in 2001. The book is written from the first and third person point of view by and about the Mirabal sisters.
Minerva, Patria, and Maria “Mate” Teresa, were prominent figures, along with their husbands, in the Dominican Republic revolution to overthrow the dictator Trujillo. In the course of their activism, they and their families were targeted by the military regime, imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately assassinated as they were returning from visiting their husbands in jail. On November 25, 1960, the three sisters were murdered and their bodies dumped to look like an accident, in a plot by the dictator Trujillo. The sisters were survived by their sister Dede (died in 2014 of natural causes).
In her book, Alvarez relates their stories as told by all four sisters – a chapter per sister at different points in their lives told through their voices. In the chapters recounted by Dede, they are flashbacks between what is happening in the present and what had happened in the past as she remembers her sisters. As a historical fiction novel, all the events that Alvarez shares are actual events that happened in the lives of the Mirabal sisters.
Dose of Dalia 