The Butterfly Tree

by Joan Lowery Nixon

Great-grandmother comes to stay with Jennifer and her family in Texas for the last stretch of her life. As Great-grandmother gets closer to death, she becomes more tired and stays in bed, and people bring her gifts - a soft shawl, peppermint tea, a goose-down pillow, and Father Donovan comes to bring the anointing of the sick. Jennifer wants to give Gran a gift too, so she draws a picture of a monarch butterfly and tells Gran that soon the monarchs will be migrating and they will settle in the tree outside and be almost as beautiful as the cherry trees that Gran has described to Jennifer.

28 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Author of more than one hundred books, Joan Lowery Nixon is the only writer to have won four Edgar Allan Poe Awards for Juvenile Mysteries (and been nominated several other times) from the Mystery Writers of America. Creating contemporary teenage characters who have both a personal problem and a mystery to solve, Nixon captured the attention of legions of teenage readers since the publication of her first YA novel more than twenty years ago. In addition to mystery/suspense novels, she wrote nonfiction and fiction for children and middle graders, as well as several short stories. Nixon was the first person to write novels for teens about the orphan trains of the nineteenth century. She followed those with historical novels about Ellis Island and, more recently for younger readers, Colonial Williamsburg. Joan Lowery Nixon died on June 28, 2003—a great loss for all of us.