The Butterfly Girl

August 12, 2019
Thirty-year-old private investigator Naomi Cottle returns in Denfeld’s gripping follow-up to 2017’s The Child Finder, continuing her search for the sister she left behind when she fled captivity as a child. It won’t be easy: Naomi remembers nothing of the time before or during her captivity, not even her sister’s name. A series of recent murders of street kids has piqued her interest, and during her investigation in Portland, Ore., Naomi meets 12-year-old Celia, who is living on the streets after her stepfather was acquitted for sexually molesting her; Celia is terrified that he’ll do the same to her little sister, Alyssa. Celia finds solace in the butterflies that live in her vivid imagination, in her friendship with fellow street kid Rich, and eventually, in Naomi, whose harrowing search—to which Celia may hold the key—leads to a predator who targets society’s most vulnerable. Denfeld depicts the bleak lives of street kids in heart-wrenching detail; the realities of homelessness are rendered in stark language, a striking juxtaposition against Celia’s fantasy world. Denfeld emphasizes throughout that even where there is horror, there is still hope, a theme borne out in the bittersweet conclusion. Readers will be enthralled.

August 1, 2019
An investigator who specializes in locating missing children turns her attention to a case closer to home. After introducing Naomi Cottle to readers in The Child Finder (2017), Denfeld has brought back the tough-but-fragile searcher to explore her origins. As a girl, Naomi was held captive with her sister in a bunker in rural Oregon; one day, Naomi escaped and ran to safety and was eventually taken in by a foster mother. But Naomi was never reunited with the sister she had to leave behind, and now, 20 years on, without even the ability to remember her sister's name, Naomi is trying to find her, starting with the street community in Portland. She's especially drawn to one girl she meets, Celia, a 12-year-old who's been homeless since reporting her stepfather for sexual abuse only to see him acquitted and able to move back into the family home, where Celia's younger sister still lives. Despite the fact that Celia is living on the streets at the same time as young homeless women are being murdered and dumped into the river, she feels safer there than at home thanks to the refuge she takes in the local library and in her imagination, where she obsesses over butterflies and the freedom they represent. As she works to recover her sister, gain Celia's trust, and uncover the serial killer, Naomi serves to remind us of the message of all of Denfeld's work: "People stop existing once you forget them"--and no person deserves to be forgotten. If Denfeld would ease up a bit on the sentimentality, this message could shine through all the more. A humane, though frequently mawkish, look at a system where too many fall through the cracks.

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Alyssa Bresnahan narrates the second story of Naomi, an investigator who specializes in finding missing children. Naomi has an almost blind determination to locate her own missing sister, and Bresnahan infuses her character with the desperate tenacity that engulfs her life and threatens her marriage. Naomi befriends a homeless street kid, a girl named Celia, who imagines that butterflies are her protectors. Bresnahan delivers Celia's visions of butterflies with gentle awe. The author respectfully presents the wretchedness of street life, including drug addiction and sexual abuse, and Bresnahan's well-paced narration honors that tone. The listener can find hope in the relationships between the street kids and the adults fighting to protect them. N.M.C. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

September 1, 2019
In Denfeld's second Naomi Cottle novel, the investigator is deeply obsessed by a mystery embedded in The Child Finder (2017): that of her own missing sister, whom Naomi hasn't seen since escaping captivity as a child, and can scarcely remember. Putting up signs in Portland's skid row, Naomi meets 12-year-old Celia and her group of fellow street kids. Celia, abused by her stepfather and then by the legal system that refused to believe her, conjures butterflies to help in her hardest moments, and is initially wary of outsider Naomi. Meanwhile, Naomi's search for her sister consumes her, even in the face of evil occurring right under her feet. The bodies of missing young street girls are being found in the river, and not even the FBI has any leads. Denfeld's career as a public defense investigator clearly informs her insight into Naomi's hunger for the truth and elucidates Celia's past and life on the streets. Her depictions of women and girls surviving horrific conditions through the power of their own imaginations will stay with readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)