Child Finder discerns the dark form of a man allowed to live wrong. “He lived a subterranean life, surprised at how quickly time passed even when you didn’t have much to do besides dream in the vast expanse between murder and hate.”

Naomi, the Child Finder, is joined by her husband Jerome in this matchless story of love and fear. The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld may well be the ultimate vicarious experience of a universe. For, what is your greatest fear? What is your deepest wish? Read this novel and compare them with the street children of Portland, Oregon.

No child sets out to be a rape victim. Yet how many are like Celia, a skinny girl of 12-years who sleeps hunkered in dirt beneath a freeway ramp. Her home is off limits—unless she wants more special time with step-father Teddy. Her mom’s addiction makes her incapable of working, and leaves her dependent on Teddy—the source of opioids and the teller of lies. Celia has one great fear, above all the deadly risks of street life. It is knowing that her little sister is still at home.

Celia has no option. She clings fiercely to street friends. The daily regimen is void of brushing teeth, wearing clean clothes and going to school. Their chores include dodging johns and pimps—scrounging food, begging—giving sway to bullies, avoiding packs of jocks who dole out beatings they record for social media. If that’s not enough—the Willamette is giving up Jane Doe’s—tortured street girls discarded by someone allowed to live wrong.

And yet—Celia’s fear is stalled by one librarian and a million wings of matchless beauty. While Celia lives, you breathe. Rare emotions are bred on every page. Compare them with your life. Your friends’ lives. Your relatives. In today’s world, you are asleep if you don’t see the Celias of our times close by and all around you. The vicarious experience takes root. The world finds us balanced on a fulcrum—wavering between the terrors and taking action. Naomi, the Child Finder, is the option-maker.

Does it end happily? This story of cruelty, after all the murders, the abject horror, the bullying, the perversions—repeating, repeating—all in the fields and forests of my state—all in the streets and rivers and libraries of my neighborhood—Does it end well? Let me tell you this about a story and a life. There is an afterglow, but how brightly it shines depends on two things. The fulcrum and the butterflies.

Rene Denfeld is 3 for 3. Three novels, three home runs. The Butterfly Girl is the second story featuring Naomi. Naomi is a hero, a rock star, a super-sleuth. Now, as she searches for her own long-lost sister, she encounters my favorite—a child sublimely driven to live right. Even though she bears burdens far crueler than any child deserves. Someone at the gym began calling Celia “Li’l Diablo.” And my heart broke for joy.


Image: My copy of a masterpiece. The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld