LES TROIS PAPILLONS (‘The Three Butterflies’) is a story about three generations of men who fall into misfortune because of a bad decisions made at key junctures in their lives. Oddly, the timing of their decisions coincides with the 28-year cyclical migration of Swallowtail butterflies out of the south of France. The plot begins in Germany in 1944, resurfaces in 1972, and concludes in America in 2000. Thus, each chapter is divided into three sub-chapters describing each man’s journey until the climactic final chapter where their lives converge. While there are three distinct plots, there is really only one true protagonist, Mitchell Jameson. Mitchell is an American author who in the year 2000 uncovers the hidden lives of the other two men, men he is devoting his latest novel to. One of the subjects is his estranged biological father, a US Army officer during the Vietnam War; the other is his Grandfather, a German SS prison guard at the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II. As for himself, Mitchell is in the middle of tragic marital affair with the timing of the infidelity taking place during the migration of the butterflies. For Mitchell the doomsday timing seems too coincidental for his fate not to already be sealed. But the real question for Mitchell becomes how much does free will determine his destiny or is his destiny preordained, as if by some genetic predisposition. Will he repeat the tragic patterns of his father and grandfather? And, being a writer, how much of an illusion has his imagination played in discovering the supposed truths about his predecessors, especially with so little information about them available 28 and 56 years after-the-fact. Ultimately, the question for Mitchell is will he fight fate or choose his own destiny and reunite with his wife…………………………Classified as a literary fiction, because of the historic perspective of the plots, this novel can also fall under the ‘historical fiction’ genre. Originally penned in 2001, this novel has been completely rewritten and revamped. Today, it is considered one of David Martin Anderson’s best stories.
