The Butterfly Artist

THE BUTTERFLY ARTIST is loosely based on the life of Maria Sibylla Merian, a seventeenth-century German artist and entomologist who was the foremost expert on the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths and the first woman to travel to distant lands in the name of science. The novel follows Merian and her daughters as they navigate an unlikely trajectory from Frankfurt, Germany, to a communal religious sect, to the rainforest in Suriname.

To escape an abusive husband, Maria flees with her two daughters, finding refuge in a Labadist community. While there, Maria is enraptured by a blue butterfly sent from Suriname. She ingratiates herself with the religious community, seeking an invitation to their outpost in Suriname. But when her daughter Thea’s closest friend is raped by the Labadist leader, Maria recognizes the danger to her children. She moves her family to Amsterdam, sets up a workshop, and struggles to establish herself as an artist and natural philosopher. As soon as she’s able to raise the funds, Maria travels to Suriname in search of the blue butterfly. On an expedition upriver led by an indigenous female guide and an enslaved African housemaid, Maria falls ill with fever and encounters hostility from unexpected quarters. Facing a mutiny, her relationship with Thea falters, and suddenly the survival of all four women is at stake.

While set in the 17th century, THE BUTTERFLY ARTIST explores themes that will resonate today: the mother-daughter bond; relationships between colonizers and indigenous people; the dependence of art/science on abuse, and the ability of women to choose their own values and find their own voices.

Readers of Lauren Groff’s Matrix: A Novel, Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things will love this book.

Myths andMigrations

The remote northwest of nineteenth-century Iceland is no place for Helga, a free-thinking little girl who yearns to read, write stories, and escape a life bound by tradition. Helga lives with eight others in a tiny one room cottage. Hard labor gets them through freezing winters and demanding summers. Despite a psychologically abusive father and harsh physical conditions, the precocious young Helga finds solace in the love of her twin sister Inga and the encouragement of her mother who teaches her to find strength in the adventures of strong Icelandic goddesses.

When she is only seven, Helga’s beloved mother dies, leaving her a message she’ll never forget in a bound book of blank pages: Create your own life. Fly like a bird escaping winter. Soon after her mother’s death, Helga’s father who has taken up with the housemaid and fathered another child, sends her away from her twin to live alone as a pauper on a distant farm. Thus begins a physical, emotional, and intellectual journey in which Helga fights not only for survival, but for liberty of thought and choice.

Once out of servitude, Helga travels from Iceland to a pioneer community in the Dakota Territory, and eventually to Seattle. She records her story in the book her mother gave her as she leaves the familiar behind, time and again, for a better, freer existence. She becomes a mother and a writer, suffers devastating heartbreak, finds more than one kind of love, learns a profound appreciation of the natural world – birds, especially -- faces numerous brushes with death, and ultimately is embroiled in a life-changing battle over the position of women vs. the ideas of men and the church.

A poignant, atmospheric story with strong book-club appeal, MIGRATIONS is the first in a potential trilogy tracing three generations of women, akin to Jane Smiley’s The Last Hundred Years Trilogy. Comparable to BURIAL RITES by Hannah Kent, THE THIRTEENTH TALE by Diane Setterfield, and Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s THE MERCIES with vivid tones of Annie Proulx, MIGRATIONS explores how the power of having choice and vesting change can lead to transformative self-discoveries as Helga travels from desolation to the place she really belongs.