The Butterfly Keeper

Rosie Elater is a U.S. Air Force veteran, mother of three, and advocate for resilience, healing, and transformation. Born and raised on Chicago’s West Side, she learned early what it meant to survive instability, protect her siblings, and rise from the kind of trauma designed to break a child. The Butterfly Keeper is a deeply intimate memoir of survival, generational wounds, and the painstaking journey of becoming. Told through the sacred stages of a butterfly’s transformation, Rosie Bevel threads together a childhood marked by chaos, fear, and constant movement, a little girl sleeping on pallets, learning to shrink during her mother’s storms, and becoming the protector of her younger brothers long before she could protect herself.