Mary Alice Monroe embraces butterflies

Barbara Bergwerf

Novelist Mary Alice Monroe bids a fond farewell to a monarch butterfly she raised.

They are elegant and ephemeral, grace notes in our imagination, and critical to their ecological niche. They carry symbolic weight far heftier than their size, and undergo one of nature's most astounding metamorphoses.

They, meaning the monarch butterfly, are also imperiled.

Isle of Palms author Mary Alice Monroe returns to the natural world for her latest novel, "The Butterfly's Daughter" (Gallery Books), championing a species she has traveled near and far to study, and employing its symbology in her story of a young woman's journey of discovery.

Set against a landscape of the monarch's migratory path, a journey of thousands of miles from the United States to their winter home in Mexico, the novel ushered its author on a similar sojourn.

"The process of this book required so much research and so much time," says Monroe, a keynote speaker at the recent South Carolina Book Festival in Columbia.

"For this one, I went from Milwaukee across the Great Plains states to Texas and finally to the (butterfly) sanctuaries in Mexico, experiencing a spiritual awakening of my own."

In "The Butterfly's Daughter," Luz Avila, a young American of Mexican/German ancestry, had hoped to make that same trip with her grandmother, Abuela. But when the latter dies, Avila determines to make the trip on her own, imbued by stories of the ways of the mariposa ("butterfly," in Spanish): from the myths of Aztec goddesses to the tending of chrysalises to the monarch's heroic flights.

In the process, she hopes not only to honor the grandmother who raised her, but to glean the fate of the mother, Mariposa, she barely knew.

As she travels from Milwaukee to the small mountain village of Angangueo, Avila will impact other women's lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

As with other animal species to which Monroe has been drawn, and have been so integral to her books, the monarch butterfly exerted a strong attraction. So much so that she began raising them on her own.

"Everyone looks at butterflies in terms of their beauty -- I call them joy with wings. But when you raise the monarchs and see that caterpillar emerge from the darkness in eight to 12 days as this amazing winged creature, you understand how miraculous it is and why so many cultures use it as a symbol of rebirth. But unlike a bird or a whale that migrates thousands of miles, the monarch returns home as a fourth-generation creature.

Monroe, a scientist before turning to fiction, says she wanted to tell a story that was lively and entertaining without being bogged down in too much detail. Aztec mythology was pivotal in the book, and the author worked hard to establish the desired narrative structure, mindful that the theme of metamorphosis is a well-worn one, needing fresh treatment.

"In this book, as in most of my books, I reveal the story through the eyes of characters who are intimately involved with a species which touches their lives intimately," says Monroe, currently at work on a new novel, "Tides of Memory." "Luz's journey is a metaphor for all the journeys we take off the beaten path, opening ourselves to whatever comes."

Most memorably, Monroe's migration took her to the mountain fastness of Michoacan in the company of 12 members of the group Monarchs Across Georgia.

"It was amazing. We made an arduous climb up to three sanctuaries on these little horses. The volcanic ash was very thick. For as far as you could see, it looked like beehives or termite bags hanging off these huge fir trees. But when the sun broke through the mist and clouds, it was like an explosion of orange confetti. The monarchs were flying everywhere, mating and dancing. I remember thinking, 'This is what Heaven must feel like.'

"Even though you're with other people, you are alone and feel so connected to something bigger than you. It gives you hope. One of the lessons of the book and one of the lessons I relearned is that of transformation and its reoccurrence, how vital it is to be open to new adventures."