Butterfly Heart

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.