When Julia Alvarez’s publisher pitched to her the idea of publishing a graphic novel of her 1994 book, In the Time of the Butterflies, she had some misgivings. The internationally acclaimed bestseller, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, had already been made into a 2001 feature film starring Salma Hayek and Edward James Olmos. Yet another adaptation might be overkill, she thought at the time.
But the famed Middlebury author and poet also knew that a graphic novel would expose a new generation of readers to her fictionalized account of the real-life Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic. And it would do so in a way that honors a storytelling medium popular in Latino culture.
Code-named las Mariposas, or “the Butterflies,” the four Mirabal siblings — Dedé, Minerva, Maria Teresa and Patria — became national heroes for their resistance to the brutal, 31-year dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the mid-20th century. Trujillo ultimately had three of the four sisters killed before his assassination in 1961. Years later, Dedé, the sole surviving sister, told their story to Alvarez, whose father belonged to the same resistance movement and was forced to flee the Caribbean island nation for the U.S. in 1960.
Published on September 1, In the Time of the Butterflies: The Graphic Novel, illustrated and adapted by Krystal Quiles of Philadelphia, retells the Mirabal sisters’ story. Quiles, 35, a Bronx-born artist of Puerto Rican descent, was familiar with Alvarez’s work, but she hadn’t read the novel before auditioning for the assignment.
“I knew it would be a big challenge, and I didn’t go into this lightly. But it was also such an honor to be asked,” Quiles said about her debut graphic novel. “Once [Alvarez] gave her blessing for the book, I still had my own feelings of, Am I worthy?”
Alvarez, 76, certainly thought so. She called working with the young cartoonist “a wonderful experience.” Alvarez reassured Quiles that she wouldn’t micromanage the project or interject her own ideas about how the novel should be condensed and reimagined. As she told Quiles at the time, “We don’t own the stories. They come through us, and we give them the expression that’s our medium.”
“Every step of the way, she has surprised me by the ways she figured out how to do something,” Alvarez added.
One example: Quiles’ decision to illustrate each sister in a different color, both to help readers tell them apart and to highlight their personalities visually. Minerva, the “adventurous spirit,” is portrayed as “the green of the sea,” Quiles explained, whereas Dedé, holder of all the sisters’ memories and grief, is represented in blue. She portrayed Trujillo in red, to reflect the blood he spilled.
Alvarez noted that the medium has deep roots in Latin American culture. Shortly after World War II, so-called fotonovelas, or pulp-fiction-like comic book novels, sprung up in Spain, Italy and, later, Mexico, made using film stills instead of drawings. Fotonovelas became a popular tool of social justice movements, partly because they were cheap to produce and accessible to poor and working-class people, many of whom were illiterate. In fact, Alvarez owned a fotonovela about the Mirabal sisters. In 2022 Vermont Humanities chose the graphic novel The Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont as its annual Vermont Reads book because the state’s Latin American workers were familiar with the format.
Though Alvarez and Quiles will attend some public events together, Alvarez said she is more than happy that the illustrator will get the spotlight. As she told Quiles, “It’s your work. I’m standing behind you this time. Take it!” ➆
This article appears in September 9 • 2026.
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