In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez On November 25, 1960, three sisters and their driver were murdered in what is now the Dominican Republic after they had just visited their husbands in jail. The sisters and their husbands were political objectors to the regime of the dictator Trujillo. These facts are used for the basis of this novel.
Each of the sisters who died, and their surviving sister, narrates a chapter in turn, talking about their lives, their romances, but mostly their politics. Overall, this book is very well written, but there are a few characters who appear drastically different in different chapters, without any explanation. The names of the children of the sisters are easy to forget. The postscript should have told us a little more about what later happened to Trujillo's regime; I am not the only reader who does not know much about South American reader, and I am not the only reader who was not alive 40 years ago. Commounism is idealized in this book without really being discussed. One of the sisters says that while she thinks people should be good, she doesn't think you can force people to become nice.
Thoughtful reading.
