Buy Butterfly's Child

Butterfly's Child

Book Trade Paperback

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$15.49 (8% off)
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Synopsis

While back in the West to attend his grandmother's funeral, Cord Bridger uncovers two shocking revelations: his grandmother had a lesbian lover named Juanita, and he has a teenaged son named Kalin. Fate brings all three together, but to preserve his new family, Cord must leave his safe life in New York City behind to carve a living from the harsh ranch lands of Nevada.

To forge a life with Juanita and Kalin, Cord must first discover the dark secret burning a hole in Kalin's heart. With the help of Tomeo, a handsome Japanese veterinarian, Cord travels a gut–wrenching road of triumphs and tragedies to insure his son will survive the sinister violence of his past. But as Tomeo becomes more than just a helpful friend to Cord, a new set of problems arise between Cord and Kalin that may threaten the happiness of them all.

Review

I was not familiar with Alan Chin’s work before reading Butterfly’s Child. I have to say that he now has another fan. This story was unique for me in that it was a slow start. I wasn’t sure that I could get into the storyline. After the first chapter, the remainder of the story built slowly, intriguing me, yet I still wanted to draw out the pleasure of it all.

Chin does a great job of developing the characters. This story is of love, loss, family, re-connections, dysfunction, pain and healing. Cord, the protagonist, is dealing with his life in NYC, yet he isn’t really living. He goes from one point of confinement to another, shutting himself out from the world. It isn’t until his grandmother dies and he has to head to Nevada to settle her estate that he begins to emerge from what I would categorize as a cocoon that he has built around himself. As his character develops, you learn what his ghosts are, and why he has sequestered himself.

From that point, the characters begin to appear, each with his or her own story and the connections between them and Cord become clearer. Surprises lurk, fragile situations and secrets revealed cause rifts but also bring healing. There is no better way to explain how well this book is written than to compare it to a symphony, building in tempo until it reaches a crescendo. I loved it through and through!

-- Stephen Jackson

Product Format Information

Book Trade Paperback: $15.49

Availability: Usually ships in
5-10 days
ISBN: 9781615816583
Catalog #: BT3168902

Publisher : Dreamspinner Press

Customer Reviews

Nailbiting suspense in an outstanding story of love and "family"

Bob Lind wrote on 12/20/2010:

Middle-age is a time of change for Cord Bridger, a talented NYC musician who begun to give up on things ... his dreams to become a famous concert pianist, his secure but unfulfilling dead-end job at a piano factory, and a relationship that has made him feel more lonely and unloved by the day. He finds himself returning to his boyhood home in a small remote Nevada town - which held bad memories he never wanted to revisit - due to the death of his grandmother, who had raised him after the death of his mother and abandonment of his father. After the funeral, he learns his grandmother was survived by her lesbian lover, Juanita, and that he apparently has a teenage son, Kalin. The boy's mother (his former girlfriend) quickly leaves Kalin and her younger son Jem with Cord and Juanita, to take care of "some business" with her ex-husband in California. That business becomes Cord's business, as he struggles to win over his disapproving son, deal with potential new love, and keep everyone safe from a threat he may have underestimated.

I've made no secret of the fact that Alan Chin is one of my very favorite authors, and he continues to amaze me with the variety of complex, diverse, character-driven outstanding fiction he manages to write. Though I thought he went a bit "over the top" with this one in parts, it is definitely an exciting, emotional page-turner of a story, and nobody could have done it better. Four stars out of four, in a clear Nevada sky.

- Bob Lind, Echo Magazine