The story told in the novel In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez is a true one, based on the Mirabal sisters, well-known in the Dominican republic for their heroic stand against the Trujillo regime and for what happened to them. Alvarez was born in the Dominican Republic, but she never knew the Mirabal sisters, as she explains in the postcript to her book where she notes that she and her family arrived in New York City in 1960 as exiles from their native land because of the Trujillo regime--her father had participated in an underground plot that was discovered by the country's secret police. Three of the four Mirabal sisters had been murdered some four months before that in what was deemed an "accident," though clearly it was not. Alvarez was a young girl at the time but could not get this story out of her mind, and she sought out more information on the subject whenever she was in the Dominican Republic. She notes,
During the terrifying thirty-one-year regime, any hint of disagreement ultimately resulted in death for the dissenter and often for members of his or her family. Yet the Mirabals had risked their lives (Alvarez 323).
In seeking the answer to this question, Alvarez finally wrote this novel.
The story is not told in strict chronological order and instead begins with the reminiscences of Ded?, the fourth and surviving sister, looking back from 1994 to the events of her and her sisters' life. She is often asked to recall those years and to tell about her sisters, and while she does it, she also sees it as an imposition and may resent having to go over this material again and again. In the course of the novel, the other sisters speak for themselves through diaries, letters, and other means and so become just as real as the surviving sister. The other three are Minerva, the family's political ringleader and the most outspoken of the group; Patria, who wanted to be a nun but who abandoned this calling to...