"It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found dead near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their death as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It doesn't have to. Everybody knows of Las...

A Study Guide for Julia Alvarez's "In the Time of the Butterflies," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves--lines from...

The American odyssey of Yo, a Dominican woman writer whose family arrived in the U.S. as refugees from a dictatorship. The novel follows her youth, with its energy and optimism, and the setbacks as she grows older, including two divorces.

"Original and illuminating."-The New York Times Book Review In her most ambitious work since In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez tells the story of a woman whose poetry inspired one Caribbean revolution and of her daughter whose dedication to teaching strengthened another. Camila Henriquez Urena is about to retire from her longtime job teaching Spanish at Vassar College. Only now as she sorts through family papers does she begin to know...

75 Poems by the Author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies The works of this award-winning poet and novelist are rich with the language and influences of two cultures: those of the Dominican Republic of her childhood and the America of her youth and adulthood. They have shaped her writing just as they have shaped her life. In these seventy-five autobiographical poems, Alvarez's clear voice sings out in...

For generations, General Rafael Trujillo has ruled the Dominican Republic with a mixture of terror and savagery, until Minerva Mirabal dares to oppose him. Inspired by her love for a rebel leader, Minerva and her sisters, known as Las Mariposas, endure unimaginable hardships in a battle for the very soul of a nation. But as their acts of bravery gain notoriety, Trujillos forces close in determined to put an end to Minervas heroics.