Butterfly Heart - by Moa Backe Åstot (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This tender YA, a bestseller in Sweden, tells a story about love, grief, and the right to define who you are, from the perspective of Vilda, an indigenous Sami teenager fighting to assert her heritage and identity"--

Book Synopsis

Vilda takes life as it comes, talking for hours about everything and nothing with her best friend, Alma. It's never been a big deal to Vilda that her mother's side of the family is Sámi and her father's is Swedish, but as summer vacation starts, she wants to know more about her indigenous roots-and she's looking forward to her beloved grandfather, Áddjá, teaching her the Sámi language.

Then Áddjá has a fatal heart attack and, overnight, Vilda loses not only a person she loves most in the world, but a crucial link to her history and identity. It's disorienting in ways deep and superficial: she doesn't know what to wear, what to say, or how Alma and her friends should react. And all this comes while her body is changing, and she's swamped by confusing thoughts and feelings about an older boy she meets at her grandfather's funeral.

Feeling whole seems impossibly hard to reach.

Butterfly Heart is a tender, heartwarming story about love, grief, and the right to define who you are.

Review Quotes

"The conflicting teenage desires of being seen and hidden, both proud of and uncomfortable in one's body, are realistically depicted, and Vilda's obsessive journal writing about Samuel, someone she doesn't really know, will likely feel familiar to any lovelorn teen."- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Vilda's friendship struggles and relationship with her sister are particularly relatable and well shown, as is the grief that interrupts their lives. Most poignant is Vilda's journey in confidently claiming her identity... A clear look at coming of age and healing from grief."-Booklist

STAR] "Watching mercurial Vilda figure out who she wants to be and how to get there is a delight that's bolstered by Broomé's sparkling translation. From emotional depths to a healing, triumphant resolution, Vilda is an Everygirl for our time. Limns the volatile peaks and valleys and emotional quicksand of adolescence with compassion and wry humor."

About the Author

Moa Backe Åstot, born in 1998 in Malmberget, is Sami and a reindeer owner. She has studied creative writing at Umeå University and Jakobsberg Folk School's well-regarded creative writing program. She has received a number of awards for her writing, among them one from Sveriges Radio in 2018 for her short story, "A Small Red Drop." She lives in Jokkmokk. Fire From the Sky is her debut novel.