White Butterfly
By Saoirse Prendergast
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Is a butterfly a butterfly when its wings are held fast?
Two things impale Sakura, a lover and witness to white butterflies, to a past she cannot leave behind.
Her first wing is broken that day at the harbour, when everything changes. Twelve is too young to lose a father. Her idyllic life on Acres Island off the East coast of Canada is shattered. In one terrible moment, all her heroes, confidantes, and inspirations are taken away.
Her artist mother, who named Sakura after cherry blossom, is frozen. Her older brother becomes a distant presence. Her best friend Jack is far away in a world of before, a parallel universe free of tragedy.
No one can reach Sakura until she finds her love of horses and, through this, meets someone who will change her life forever.
But nothing is as it seems. Sakura's second wing is breaking. Those who understand, those who don't. She discovers her truth and begins to create a new life, where butterflies live free.
Praise for White Butterfly
An incredible, insightful portrayal of the solitary and self-loathing world of a victim of coercive control, and the power of evil to destroy lives. Yet despite the evident challenge to be understood, Saoirse crafts a meaningful pathway to hope, spotlighting the critical role of those heroes who provide support and refuge to women in need. This is a brilliant and much-needed insight into the reverting crime of coercive control.
Louise Crowley, Professor of Family Law, University College Cork
In White Butterfly, Saoirse Prendergast has walked that fine line between darkness and light. She has created a book that is written with a lightness of touch while, at the same time, dealing with coercive control, a darkness that has long been a weapon used by some men in their relationships with women. The thing that is most disturbing, most frightening and, ultimately, most powerfully dealt with in White Butterfly is the banality with which that control is exercised. The author brings us ordinary, credible people who find themselves in very dark circumstances, people whose lives and losses are unforgettable.
John MacKenna, Irish playwright & novelist
This compelling book holds important insight. It tells the truth of what it means to suffer daily, incremental incidents that amount to abuse which can’t always be determined. It is a powerful and present novel, true to the reality of what can’t be seen and must be named. The chief achievement is that it is free of typecasting. It offers acute insight of how abuse can creep around the strongest growth and strangle it.
Suzanne Power, Author, Mentor and Editor
Saoirse Prendergast does an excellent job of showing the complexities of coercive control and how it manifests itself. White Butterfly shows how, ultimately it can ruin someone’s sense of self and their whole meaning of life.
The story so eloquently shows the insidious nature of coercive control and the devastating consequences of it. It shows exactly what a woman/mother has to go through to leave an abusive relationship and what follows can be equally as devastating...going to court, staying in a refuge for safety, dealing with family and friends who don’t always understand, and dealing with post-separation abuse while trying to parent. The message is clear- with the right support and self-love, there is life after abuse, but it takes a lot of work.
Lisa Morris, Manager Amber Women's Refuge
A white butterfly, a symbol of purity and hope, representing comfort for those left behind.
For Sakura, finding her way through grief, the white butterfly was soon to become a symbol of strength and transformation as she navigates a confusing, manipulative, lonely world unknown and unseen to those closest to her.
In White Butterfly, the author portrays the distressing torment of Sakura’s life, lived as a victim of coercive control. A story that draws you in, where you find yourself willing Sakura’s family and friends to listen, to hear, to see, whilst knowing that they can’t truly understand.
Sakura, the white butterfly whose inner strength was so powerful that she flew high towards her freedom, above the arrogance of mankind. A powerful insight - White Butterfly is a heart-wrenching story that must be told.
Lisa Kavanagh
In White Butterfly, we get to see how a relationship can present as loving and caring whilst the main character navigates ‘invisible landmines under her feet’. We see the obliviousness of her family and friends to her being in a relationship where incremental woundings are obscured and concealed. This story illustrates the deep chasm that often exists between family and friends seeing and understanding when their loved one is in a coercive control relationship. It also showed how certain actions of family and friends were not only unhelpful but inflicted even more psychological wounding. Aspects of the legal system were also deeply wounding.
Geraldine Kennedy, Psychotherapist MIAHIP
Saoirse's novel illustrates so seamlessly how her main character Sakura's desire for normality comes at the expense of her emotional truth. Here lies the heart of this book, Sakura's gripping journey as she strives to conceal the hidden truth of a relationship based on coercive control and the slow deconstruction of her sense of self and her sanity.
Saoirse's description of such a traumatic process is very authentic and regrettably experienced every day by millions of women throughout the world. The great strength of the book lies in Sakura's recovery process which was at times very challenging for her, so often for many women too difficult to deal with initially, and highlights the need for a great deal of support.
I would recommend this wonderful book, especially for anyone who strives to live an emotionally truthful life.
Daphne Hunt Co-Founder, and Former Manager of the Rape Crisis Centre, Carlow
'Incredible, authentic and insightful'.
'This novel has a real feel for the creeping psychological trauma being heaped upon Sakura. Her continued self-questioning is so well captured.
Paul McCarthy SC
'A page-turner'
'They just don't get it' This is the dilemma, the hero of this book, Sakura faces. White Butterfly explores two principal themes-grief and coercive control and it is very difficult for the reader not to become emotionally involved, given the heartfelt nature and insightful treatment afforded by the author. As with the handling of grief, the handling of abusive undermining treatment of a partner, worse because it's mental attack rather than physical -no tell tale bruises to alert family and friends-should prompt us to evaluate our own relationships.
Joe Doyle-Geata Buidhe Books