“The only thing that ever remains constant is the blue butterfly. Every time the current reality goes swirling out of sync and I am transported to another time and another place, the butterfly is there. It flutters into my circumstances, a warning that everything is about to change, a reminder that time never stands still….”
When their parents, a historian and a physicist experimenting with time travel, vanish, 14-year-old Mollie Donavon and her older brother Jack must accept that their parents are gone or try to find them. Using their parents’ research and the one object that seems to be the key – a blue morpho butterfly- they set off on a journey traveling through decades, sometimes alone, sometimes together, to try and find them. If they change some lives and a little bit of history along the way, so much the better.
A new YA novel by Lynn Murphy, “The Blue Butterfly,” explores the concept of time travel, using the blue morpho butterfly as the method for putting the process into motion. Murphy says that she has long been fascinated with the blue morpho butterfly; as an art teacher, she was inspired by the story of Matisse happening upon a preserved blue morpho in an antique shop on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris and purchasing it, crediting the discovery with changing his color palette and thus his success as an artist.
In “The Blue Butterfly,” due to be released Sept. 4, the morpho is both metaphor and catalyst for the plot. The idea that the highly reflective iridescent wings of the butterfly might refract light enough to bend time and allow travel to the past is the premise of the action.
Lynn Murphy, a resident of Peachtree City, is the author of several books. She teaches art, photography and creative writing at Arlington Christian School in Fairburn. When she is not writing she enjoys photography, running, biking, other outside activities and reading.
