Butterfly Island
Diana Wagenbach of Berlin, Germany, hits one of the deeper potholes in life; she discovers her husband is having an affair. Then a message comes that her elderly aunt is in hospital, not expected to live. Diana rushes to the old family home near London to see her aunt, and think about how – or if – she wants to salvage her marriage. Aunt Emily wakes long enough to tell Diana that a secret hangs over the Tremayne family; a falling-out between sisters, the cause of which has never been disclosed. Diana, who with her aunt’s passing, becomes the final descendant of the Tremayne family, finds clues in a hidden compartment. If she can connect them, she will disclose the family secret – why Emily’s grandmother Victoria needed to beg forgiveness of her sister Grace (the grandmother of Diana).
One of those clues is a palm leaf covered with archaic Ceylonese writing. Diana takes it to Sri Lanka (once Ceylon), where with the help of historian Jonathan Singh, she seeks to decipher the leaf’s significance, along with the other long-hidden Tremayne secrets. Diana learns that Victoria and Grace once lived on a Ceylon tea plantation owned by their father. The closest of friends, the sisters energetically explore their new home together, and with the help of the plantation’s Ceylonese foreman.
Butterfly Island is a very entertaining multi-period novel by the German author Corina Bomann. Bomann presents the intertwined lives of Diana Wagenbach and Grace Tremayne in a beautifully-told story, lush and romantic, but not necessarily a romance. The author skillfully teases the reader with Diana’s clues, leaving the most heart wrenching twists for the final pages. I recommend Butterfly Island for all.
