The Scream of the Butterfly

by Sean McGrath

Sean McGrath's autobiography chronicles his journey through the initiations of young adulthood - and theneed during his constant moving, for an anchoring love. His long andimpetuous infatuation with Nadya a beautiful Eurasian girl endsin obsession and rejection - and his futile search for the "reasonswhy," in many of the wrong places. His odyssey takes him for a visitwith a mysterious monk in Burma prior to the bloody revolution of1988, on an adventure with a 'lion man' conservationist who is killedby poachers in Kenya, to an encounter with mercenaries implicated inthe assassination of the president of the Comoros Islands, anorientation session with a doomsday cult and experimentation withdrugs and sex in the red light district of Bangkok. During his collegedays in the United States he is reunited with Nadya whose eventual'betrayal' leads to his addiction to amphetamines, rehabilitation in apsychiatric ward and a brief encounter with a radical revolutionarygroup. His spiritual awakening begins while on a Red Cross mission tothe areas devastated by the eruption of Mt Pinatubo and his volunteerwork in the Cordilleras of the Philippines, leads to a psychichealer's clinic, an encounter with the Pope on World Youth Day inManila and culminates at a funeral pyre in the shadows of the majesticsnow-capped Himalayas.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 2000