A busy and successful travel consultant, Julie Ellisons life evolved from the most harrowing of beginnings; she married at seventeen to escape her mothers fierce Hollywood ambitions for her, only to be deserted by her husband a few months later leaving her pregnant and facing the birth of their child alone. She entered a second marriage hoping desperately to find a sustaining love for herself and her child, only to have that fail too. Now, grateful that her daughter has weathered her own difficult passage to adulthood, Julie falls in love with Paul Bassett, a young international investment banker who is about to move to London.
This poignant journal-like account begins in New York and takes the reader on a roller coaster of countries and emotions that span a mere year. Their meetings are ecstatic, fleeting and bittersweet, for Paul is married and the father of two young children. Because of her own past Julie painfully identifies with his family and empathizes about the loss they will suffer if they lose him. Paul determines to leave his marriage once he stabilizes his financial life, and as the months pass he is able to achieve his goal. His wife agrees to a divorce and he departs for New York to join Julie and celebrate their future.
The profound relief she finally feels intensifies Julies enormous exhilaration. But the news of a terrible plane crash in Paris gives her a sense of foreboding that turns out to be uncannily accurate; in a last minute change of plans Paul boarded the ill-fated plane. There are no survivors. In a series of brief scenes that distill Julies grief, Butterfly in Amber piercingly conveys how she manages to absorb his loss, decide to embrace life again, and commemorate their love in an act that affirms it forever.
Gordon McKenzie of the London newspaper, The Mail on Sunday describes Butterfly in Amber as a modern day "Brief Encounter". Two short stories, "The Eves of Christmas "and "The Excursion" offer variations on these themes. These stories are based on the experiences, dreams, failures, disappointments and hopes of Ms. Jacobs. They combine to create "Butterfly in Amber and Other Fragments of a Life", an affecting collection about the nature of loss and the miracle of human capacity for recovery and renewal.
Jacket and author photos by Ted Fine
