A love letter from history is hidden behind a painting…

Hope and Michael celebrate their first anniversary together with rain-soaked, drunken sex that results in conception. She’s a librarian at the university; he’s an office drone with a fascination for the migration of the Monarch butterfly – and for his best friend’s girlfriend, the copper-fringed Evette. Hope and Michael view the nine months ahead together very differently: she with excitement tinged with anxiety; he with terror and duplicity.

Michael and Evette become closer when choosing Hope’s 30th birthday present: an Austian watercolour unearthed in a junk shop, signed with an enigmatic butterfly emblem, a yellowed love letter hidden in its frame.

Anxious about her pregnancy and her relationship, Hope diverts her energies into tracking down the mysterious (and world-changing) artist, a discovery that will give new meaning to the life of her unborn child – and her uncertain future with Michael.

An insightful and inventive turning-thirty novel, with a wonderful ensemble cast of eccentric characters – and a remarkable surprise from history.