In this harrowing first-person memoir, a family besieged by trauma, infighting, and financial collapse sets the stage for a son’s own cycles of mental and physical abuse that he must confront or be destroyed by.
Ken Wyder was one of many children of the Bentall dynasty, which made its riches in British Columbia through construction and real estate. Acclaimed for their prosperity, philanthropy, and Christian values, the family was a bastion of conservative ideals. But behind closed doors lay a world of repressed emotions and physical brutality. As the family’s empire collapsed, Ken’s home life became increasingly volatile, punctuated by his father’s unpredictable rage. Emerging from this domestic crucible, Ken indulged his impulses beyond redemption and perpetuated the traumas enacted upon him, destroying his marriage and career. In midlife he was faced with a choice: continue living by the rules that haunted his youth or take the less-travelled path of forgiveness and understanding.
Kill Not the Butterfly is an outstanding study in the art of self-destruction: a portrait of masculinity malformed, and the intergenerational traumas that keep the cycle going. It also proves, with unsettling clarity, that one may escape everything in this world except oneself.