The Butterfly Garden Summary

The Butterfly Garden Overview

The Butterfly Garden is an adult thriller by American author Dot Hutchison. In this novel, which is related from alternating first and third-person perspectives, a man known only as the Gardener has taken beautiful girls marked with tattoos of butterfly wings as sexual prisoners in a lovely Garden. After thirty years of collecting his “butterflies,” the Gardener’s reign ends when the FBI raids the man’s property. FBI special agents question Inara, a girl who was a butterfly, in an attempt to learn what happened in the Garden and why so many of the girls look to her as a leader. As they question her, one of the agents realizes that Inara is not as tough as she seems. Themes in the novel include the reality of illusions, the limit of beauty, and the importance of identity.