The War On Butterflies

By Antonio J. Hopson

Tobieth Stuart Daye is short for a fifteen-year-old. Damn hormones --they're his enemy. And so are the homemade fireworks that nearly kill him on his birthday, a day when he's seduced by a cheerleader who likes her boys small, and is chased down by a Pentecostal minister who likes them sin-free. And Toby's adopted cousin Ai? She's decided to end it all, but first she's determined to lose her virginity to him. The War on Butterflies is as if Barbra Kingsolver and Peter Hoeg had a sassy redheaded, love-child and sent it to Sunday school with a kick in the ass. It's a hybrid: with Kingsolver's readability and Hoeg's post modern style, economy of prose and edgy commentary. On the surface life seems idyllic in their Pacific Northwest college town (Fairhaven, Wa.) but its residents are at war with Pieris rapae, the Cabbage Butterfly. Toby's backyard breeding hobby is responsible for the plague so his mother, a prominent lesbian Unitarian minister with her eye on the mayor's office, must lead the town's aerial extermination of the pest. Her civic scheming drives a wedge between her and the kids and in an act of defiance, Toby, Jace (his drug-dealing older brother) and Aiyana ditch a political party and disappear to mysterious Lummi Island. The three are trapped on the island and fight each other and their own demons and desires. Jace is addicted to heroine and is close to the edge. Aiyana is searching for truth and resolution -something to believe in before a medical time bomb that she is inflicted with explodes. And to save them both, Toby, who has always been in their orbit, must find a way to break out on his own. Come Independence Day, Vicky (their mother) must repent for her war on butterflies. She will stand alone as a rescue helicopter heads north toward Lummi Island's Haystack Peak, a mountain that harbors a great secret about her children and the origins of the butterfly pest.The War on Butterflies may sound suspiciously like YA, but it is dark at times and filled with quirky moments that will make your mother blush. Additionally, the final chapter ends in a dark hole where the light at the end of the tunnel is not God with a capital "G" -- but an existential "god", if anything at all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1520510578
• ISBN13: 9781520510576
• Release Date: March 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"