In the Time of the Butterflies
2. What happens on Patria’s retreat? How does it correspond to the attached article and the Fourteenth of June Movement?
Chapter 8: Patria, 1959
Chapter 8: Patria, 1959
Patria also struggles to reconcile her commitment to God with her desire to protect her family and defend her country. Symbolically, she and Maria Teresa make a list of the weapons they've assembled "in the pretty script we'd been taught by the nuns for writing out Bible passages." Even when the retreat house is bombed, she describes it spiritually: "His Kingdom was coming down upon the very roof of that retreat house." As they ride back down the mountain after the retreat, she says, "I tried looking up at our Father, but I couldn't see His Face for the dark smoke hiding the tops of those mountains."