The Butterfly Field

Isadora Galloway is the youngest daughter of a sweet gentle mother and a domineering father. Harsh and ambitious, her father has no time for sentiment. When her dog has puppies, a young Isadora watches him drown them in the well — an image that haunts her for much of her adult life. Her father's destructive behavior leads to cycles of dependency and abuse, including two intense and ultimately doomed relationships. But these relationships also provide her with three adored sons for whom she must fight like a tigress.

This story spans three countries and nearly twenty years - from the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties - ranging from the savage and beautiful countryside of PNG to the law courts of Australia, from immense wealth and privilege to abject poverty and imprisonment, from brutal physical and mental abuse to passionate love. Above all, it is the story of one woman's survival and triumph over every obstacle in her life to emerge free and victorious, with her beloved children by her side.

'The Butterfly Field' is a powerful and epic story of an Australian woman of uncommon strength and spirit as she fights to survive and provide a life for herself and her children in the turbulent and dangerous world of Papua New Guinea — a country whose struggle for independence so closely mirrors her own.