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The Butterfly Convention
Susan Nadler is currently working in the entertainment industry as an executive v.p. of Bandit Records, which releases all albums by country legend George Jones. Before that she was senior V.P. of A&R at Asylum Records. She herself had spent time in a Mexican prison and recorded that in her moving account of life in the 1960's called THE BUTTERFLY CONVENTION and went on to spend two years interviewing women in prison for her second book, GOOD GIRLS GONE BAD. Today she lives a much quieter life in Nashville, Tennessee.
226 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 8, 2020
By the early 1970s, the author was 25 years old and had been adrift for years in a swampy mess of drugs, pseudo-philosophy, and aimless rebellion against ordinary society. She met a guy who, after learning that she had some ready cash, talked her into a scheme to buy and distribute half a ton of hash, from which she expected to get back her money tenfold.
The guy promptly ditched his girlfriend so that he and the author could relocate to Mexico and await their hash delivery. While they waited, they played music, had sex, and burned through every variety of drugs on offer in La Paz. Eventually their shipment arrived, whereupon they were promptly arrested and dumped in a Mexican jail.
This book recounts the four and a half months she spent imprisoned while her parents worked endlessly to get her out. The interesting part of the book to me is the view into a provincial Mexican prison in the 70s: the small comforts that prisoners could purchase, the lack of prison facilities for women (since men were presumed to be controlling their women, women typically weren’t perceived to be criminals themselves), the imprisonment of mentally ill, the way jailed craftsmen still worked their trades, the twice-weekly conjugal visit days.
The book’s subtitle isn’t accurate — there’s not much about her “long way home.” We don’t learn how she left prison, what she did afterwards, or how she reintegrated into society.
(We also don’t learn what happened to the boyfriend, except that:
- she admits she lied to the judge and the police by claiming her ignorance and implicating him,
- she ditched him by giving someone else a note to pass to him in his cell, and
- he remained in prison for a year longer than she did, when an associate arranged a jailbreak in which one of the prison guards was murdered — !!!)
She shows that she learned that the heedless way she’d been living was empty and harmful, but she doesn’t seem much interested in understanding the harm caused to anyone other than herself. She acknowledges the many privileges her parents provided to her, but deeply resents them, too. And after a lifetime of routinely lying to everybody, she resents that lying to proclaim her innocence is required in order to get out of prison.
I never got the sense that she developed personal convictions or morals, merely that she determined to stop acting in way that hurt herself. That’s growth, sure, but a pretty immature level of it.
The guy promptly ditched his girlfriend so that he and the author could relocate to Mexico and await their hash delivery. While they waited, they played music, had sex, and burned through every variety of drugs on offer in La Paz. Eventually their shipment arrived, whereupon they were promptly arrested and dumped in a Mexican jail.
This book recounts the four and a half months she spent imprisoned while her parents worked endlessly to get her out. The interesting part of the book to me is the view into a provincial Mexican prison in the 70s: the small comforts that prisoners could purchase, the lack of prison facilities for women (since men were presumed to be controlling their women, women typically weren’t perceived to be criminals themselves), the imprisonment of mentally ill, the way jailed craftsmen still worked their trades, the twice-weekly conjugal visit days.
The book’s subtitle isn’t accurate — there’s not much about her “long way home.” We don’t learn how she left prison, what she did afterwards, or how she reintegrated into society.
(We also don’t learn what happened to the boyfriend, except that:
- she admits she lied to the judge and the police by claiming her ignorance and implicating him,
- she ditched him by giving someone else a note to pass to him in his cell, and
- he remained in prison for a year longer than she did, when an associate arranged a jailbreak in which one of the prison guards was murdered — !!!)
She shows that she learned that the heedless way she’d been living was empty and harmful, but she doesn’t seem much interested in understanding the harm caused to anyone other than herself. She acknowledges the many privileges her parents provided to her, but deeply resents them, too. And after a lifetime of routinely lying to everybody, she resents that lying to proclaim her innocence is required in order to get out of prison.
I never got the sense that she developed personal convictions or morals, merely that she determined to stop acting in way that hurt herself. That’s growth, sure, but a pretty immature level of it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 1, 2015
I have know the author for many years in the music industry, and she told me she had written this book, when I read it I was amazed that this was about her life. What she went through and how she could end up in a place like this. And it really brought home how anyone can have this happen to them and how anyone can change their life around, and get past such a event. A Great read!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews