The Butterfly's Kingdom

Book excerpt: Forty-one-year old Elizabeth Bishop's life has begun to feel like a string of empty successes. While her international career has prospered, her personal affairs have not and the almost urgent sense that something vital is missing inspires her to make a pilgrimage to idyllic, small town Montague to visit her closest childhood friend, Annie. Until recently, Annie's life has appeared to be perfect. She married her pillar-of-society psychiatrist husband, Arthur, while they were both still in college, became a full-time mother to their two young children and devoted her self to caring for her family. Her life seemed to be postcard perfect until just the year before, when Arthur committed suicide, leaving her to raise now eight-year-old Sam and fourteen-year-old Betsy on her own. When Elizabeth arrives in Montague, she is plunged into the dark and tangled mystery surrounding Arthur's death. Nothing, apparently, is as it seems. Annie's life has been a lie for years. Arthur was a violent, angry man who scarcely spoke to his wife. Betsy and her father shared an unnaturally close relationship that excluded Annie and everyone else. Only Sam -- sweet, cheerful, buoyant Sam -- seems to have survived unscathed, but has he? And why is Annie so afraid of Jackson, Arthur's boyhood chum who was close to both Arthur and Annie for many years before he was banished from the family? Why has he resurfaced now and what secrets are he and Annie hiding? As Elizabeth tries to sort through the web of deceit in Annie's life, her own demons begin to emerge. She is haunted in her nightly dreams by a recurring vision from childhood of a brooding moonlike face hovering just above her but remaining out of reach. Who is the face, why has it returned and what does it want? Annie believes that only Luke, her high school confidant and Elizabeth's long ago boyfriend, can provide the key to their shared crises. Without telling Elizabeth, Annie invites Luke to join them in Montague. An unexpected love story ensues as the protective layers surrounding each of the characters begin to unravel. Annie finds courage and perspective as she sees her life from a new vantage point. Betsy learns that Arthur was not her biological father and that the insanity she was so afraid of inheriting from him is not her birthright. Elizabeth recovers the deeply buried memories of her own mother's death and finally confronts the face that has been haunting her dreams since childhood. At the center of Betsy and Elizabeth's growing friendship is their shared search for a relationship with God as He is revealed in the Psalms and Proverbs. Ultimately, each of the characters finds a Higher Power to whom they can turn for strength and comfort.