Book: In The Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Krishna
This book employs the strategy of using real life events as a backdrop to a fictional story and does it very well. Portions of the book are deeply moving and the four Mirabel sisters look and act real – brave acts of courage with fear filling their minds, and during respites, a reluctance to even continue, wanting to go back to their normal life ignoring the issues of the country, and at the same time, not wanting to show their fear to the populace who adores them and lionizes them. Nice.
The author admits that the sisters in the story are her pure invention. The resistance, the pivotal event in the book are real but the story is constructed purely as a fiction.
The intro is nearly irrelevant to the story. An American woman of Dominican descent, a journalist, is coming to interview Dede, the only survivor of a massacre. Dede now is old, and is a life insurance sales person, who is sent on trips when she achieves highest sales – a multiple occurrence for her.
The journalist comes to see her which pushes her into the memory lane – before ‘the future’ when her parents and her two siblings were living a happy (and a strictly controlled) life in their village. The whole story is told as a memory and the aftermath in current terms (in epilog)
They convince their father to send them to school, where Dede’s sister Minerva meets Sinita, a loner kid, and gives her a friendship offering. She learns from Sinita that she came from an originally wealthy family and Trujillo, who usurped power (by secretly getting rid of his rivals, then getting to be the Prime Minister and finally, with army on his side, evicting the President and assuming power) killed her uncles and later killed her father. Recently he killed her brother as well, all because they opposed his vile ways.
Lina, a student in their school is chosen for marriage. By whom? By the great Trujillo who is now the President. He installs her in a big house as his mistress (and promptly moves on to another girl) and also gives a large donation to the school which builds an auditorium in Lina’s name.
In a drama, Sinita takes the veiled rebellion too far and has to be rescued by Minerva. Meanwhile Patria, the eldest and the most religious, is asked if she would become a nun fully ordained, but decides that she is in love with Pedrito Gonzales, a farm boy. She marries him and has two sons. He starts worrying about Minerva’s open comments against the President and what the repercussions to her would be. She has a miscarriage and loses faith in religion.
Dede is engaged and is in love with Jaimito but then a charming boy Virgilio (Lio) Morales comes into their lives. While initially charmed, the family is horrified to hear that he is a Communist and is trying to overthrow Trujillo. Dede helps him and her sister Minerva who is colluding with Lio.
Minerva is called by Trujillo and when he behaves badly she slaps him and runs away. His father is called in for interrogation and Minerva realizes that she has left her purse, with Lio’s letters hidden in the lining, at the dinner.
Meanwhile, Patria is converted to the revolution by the death of her son in combat with the government.
The author seems to extol all things communist and Cuban Castro is portrayed as the saviour that the whole island is waiting for. They expect Cuban troops to vanquish Trujillo and ‘liberate’ the country. Mirelle is collecting firearms to be prepared for the revolution. Patria’s church also gets involved in the underground resistance movement. She convinces her husband to join and they start a serious armed resistance movement.
When they try to convince Dode, she considers this, almost breaking marriage and angering Jaimito. But she backs out at the last moment, much to the chagrin of her sister Minerva. Then things escalate. When they are ready for insurrection, Leonardo is arrested and the family is devastated.
The sisters themselves are in prison and released much later. There is a fear that the boys will be executed and the sisters are in terror. Minerva is an inspiration to the whole country and Trujillo hates the sisters.
The expected revolution with gringo help fizzles out as the gringos fear the rebels – there is enough evidence that the rebels worship Castro and want to bring communism to Dominica as a replacement for Trujillo and so the Westerners withdraw their help. The rebels are all locked up and the rebel movement is truly demoralized.
The major event that uproots all their lives happens when the three sisters go to visit their husbands in a prison where they have been moved and which passes through mountainous route. The travel to the prison and the meeting happen uneventfully and it is the return trip that creates a problem.
The events after are touching and lovingly told. The dictator Trujillo is a real person and even the author’s father was part of the resistance (and had to flee to America so presumably the journalist in the prolog is the author herself, in imagination).
A good read and rewarding story.
8/10
– – Krishna