In the Time of the Butterflies Overview

They were the four Mirabal sisters-symbols of defiant hope in a country shadowed by dictatorship and despair.  They sacrificed their safe and comfortable lives in the name of freedom.  They were Las Mariposas, "The Butterflies," and in this extraordinary novel Patria, Minerva, Maria Teresa, and Dede speak across the decades to tell their own stories.  From tales of hair ribbons and secret crushes to gunrunning and prison torture, they describe the everyday horrors of life under the Dominican dictator Trujillo.  Through the art and magic of acclaimed novelist Julia Alvarez's imagination, they martyred Butterflies come to vibrant dramatic life in a warm, brilliant, and heartbreaking story that makes a haunting statement about the human cost of political oppression.