A Midwest Book Review:
At work, Julie is a high school math teacher who requires her students to solve complex problems. But faced with an unsafe daycare home and no other daycare openings, a husband who hates the idea of labeling their son as a "problem", and a supervisor who's angry at the amount of time she's taking off school, she's at a loss for how to come up with a solution to this particular dilemma.
Julie's struggle to help her son ultimately demands a number of mindset shifts: a willingness to become a student and ask for help, a humble acceptance of her errors, a burgeoning strength to reckon with a dominant father and retreating husband -- and the self-confidence to trust her instincts when it comes to deciding on the best next steps for her son.
Critique: With her original, exceptional, and deftly crafted novel, The Boy with the Butterfly Mind, author Lorelei Brush demonstrates a truly impressive, eloquent, character and narrative driven storytelling style that is ideal for engaging her readers in this quiet saga of a novel of a mother's dilemma with the pressures of a job, a special needs (ADA) son, and a clinically depressed husband. An inherently fascinating story that is both emotionally resonant and intellectually engaging from start to finish, The Boy with the Butterfly Mind is especially and unreservedly recommended for community library Contemporary General Fiction collections. It should be noted that this paperback edition of The Boy with the Butterfly Mind from She Writes Press is also readily available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $12.99).
Editorial Note: Lorelei Brush is a college mathematics major, a former assistant professor of child development, and the parent of a neurodivergent child. The story in her novel, "The Boy with the Butterfly Mind" deftly mixes elements of all three life experiences to describe the struggles and triumph of a young family dealing with neurodivergence. Her previous novels include Uncovering, about the trials of a nurse practitioner in northwest Pakistan, and Chasing the American Dream, about the quest of a disappointed WWII spy to be a hero in 1950s Cleveland.