Butterfly Stitching (Kruse) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
With all there is to laud in Butterfly Stitching, Kruse should be most applauded for her two female main characters, mother Samira and daughter Sahar.... [Her] women are strong. Not the faultless sort of strong. Not the flat sort of strong. The grief-torn, sorrow-weakened, hit-hard-across-the-head-with-reality and yet still just as stubborn sort of strong that is the actual veracity of a female population that is wise and foolish and oppressed and rebellious.... Butterfly Stitching is an ambitious project, capturing the soul and voice of an entire people—and Shermin Kruse succeeds, astoundingly well.
Miceala Shocklee - Los Angeles Examiner.com

 
Kruse...recreates the Iran of her childhood...incorporating the stories she heard from her mother and grandmother.... [R]eaders should be moved by the raw and painful emotions on display here and the relationship at the heart of the story.... In the world created in these pages, there is hope and even kindness among the despair. —June Sawyers
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Shermin Kruse's Butterfly Stitching is the gorgeous, intricately woven narrative of two heart-strong women who show us the beauty of ritual and custom as they clash with crisis and oppression in an old-world order. It is a rich, true-love tapestry.
Theresa Schwegel - Edgar award winning author of The Good Boy

 
Butterfly Stitching is a simply stunning novel and a beautifully written, in depth account of what it means to be a woman growing up and maturing in Iran. Touching, profound and at times shocking, you cannot fail to be moved by Butterfly Stitching and I cannot recommend it highly enough— the stories of Sahar and Samira will stay with me for a long time to come.
Karen Perkins - Bestselling author of Thores-Cross & The Valkyrie Series

 
Startling and innovative, Butterfly Stitching could be called Love in the Time of Morality Police. In an Iran few in the West have seen, Kruse's deft narrative is two women's stories of love and lost innocence. The reader, too loses innocence as we better understand the conflicting pulls of love and obligation, faith and individuality. Terrifying from the first. Compelling to the last.
Robert Chazz Chute - Author of This Plague of Days