The Butterflies Story
The Book In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez is a wonderful historical fiction on the lives of the Mirabal Sisters. There where four sisters who lived in the Dominican Republic during the three-decade-long reign, 1930 to 1961, of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. The novel is a tribute to the Mirabal family and a wonderful work of art. The book begins with Dede Mirabal ,the only surviving sister, being interviewed by an Dominican American reporter on her families story. She tells of the stories that she's told countless times about how the political turmoil took the lives of her sister's and families. Still living in her child hood home which is now a museum, she gives details of their lives growing up during this difficult era.
This book is also a tribute to the bravery of the Dominican people and especially the Mirabal sisters. Each chapter is from the perspectives of a different sister. Each having many chapters in the story, and how they came to their own time to join the movement against Trujillo. Even the surviving sister joined the movement but joined when it was already too late and her sisters and family had been assassinated. The Mirabal sisters affected the world with their sacrifice and resistance to the unjust treatment of women and their people. November twenty fifth is an observed holiday in many Latin countries for the Mirabal sisters. As we just witnessed with the Arab Spring and the fall of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi the "Just will win against the Unjust".