Chasing Butterflies: The True Story of a Daughter of 9/11

Ashley Bisman was in a high school history class the morning of September 11, 2001 when students whispered of planes crashing, fire, and terrorists. She bolted from her seat, sprinting through narrow school hallways leading to the main office. A television on the wall broadcast flames bursting from the skyscrapers, and her body went numb: Her father worked on the 101st floor of Tower 1, and instinctively she knew she would never see him alive again. Jeff Goldflam was not found. The only surviving article discovered in the devastation was his credit card.

Chasing Butterflies, among the first published memoirs of a child of 9/11, is both Bisman's love letter to her father and the story of how a teen, and then a young adult, struggled to retain what had been her "normal" life prior to the attacks. It also recounts Bisman's fight to define herself, resisting society's inclination to simply profile her as a World Trade Center victim.

As a grown woman, Bisman searches for success and love in the very city where her father was killed. Her quest to find a meaningful relationship--dating faux pas, cocktails, and girls' nights out--leads her downtown to the very place she swore she'd never set foot in again. Would it still be possible to create a life and legacy that would make her father proud?