It’s a difficult book to read because so many layers of unhappiness are revealed with each new piece of the puzzle. Each of the women has a painful story to tell. When she is in her nineties, she finally speaks out, revealing what she knows about Charlotte’s deathĮverything was more complicated than it appeared on the surface. Generous, kind-hearted, innocent, Maddie carries secrets throughout her life that burden her with guilt. She was fifteen years old at the time of the murder, but her 'voice' speaks much later. The second narrator is a servant of the family, Maddie McGlade. Her passion is given over to butterfly collecting and to horses-odd behaviors for a woman, which increase her isolation. We learn that Harriet is haughty and cold, having learned from an early age to repress her emotions. Harriet’s own voice is one, told in the form of a diary written while in prison. Each circles around the events of the fateful day of Charlotte’s death until the final, telling details are exposed. There are two voices in this novel, speaking in alternating chapters. Her mother, Harriet Ormond, was found guilty of causing the death and sentenced to a year in prison for the crime. Charlotte was locked in a wardrobe closet, tied up with a stocking that became tangled around her neck so that she was asphyxiated.

The story centers on the death of a four-year-old child, Charlotte Ormond, who died as a result of a punishment inflicted by her mother.

The butterfly cabinet book