Tanna Patterson-Z's meticulously researched novel, a fictionalized account of the 1998 kidnapping of mining executive Edward Leonard by Colombian renegades, guides readers deep into the physical and political terrain of a beautiful but dangerous country that remains off-limits to the casual traveller. At once a suspense thriller and an engrossing work of journalism, The Butterfly Connection is a story of a man who gets caught in the collision between Western corporate imperatives and revolutionary politics -- and whose unlikely obsession with the beautiful blue Morpho butterfly proves the key to his survival.

Tanna Patterson-Z has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo and a Renewable Resources Diploma from Lakeland College in Vermilion, Alberta. Her first book, Exploring the Creston Valley, published in 1989 by Waterwheel Press, is a guide to hiking, bicycling, and canoeing in the Creston Valley. She has also dabbled in children's stories and contributed articles to the Creston Valley Advance and the newsletter of the conservation group, Wildsight. Her father Claude, and her teacher-librarian mom, Genevieve, gave her a life-long love for books. She shares the Kootenay lifestyle with her husband Gene, two grown sons Jan and Sebastian.

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