First published in 1920, Marie Conway Oemler's *The Purple Heights* is the story of Peter Champneys, a fatherless boy with black hair and hazel eyes, living with his mother in a small house in South Carolina. Shy with other children, Peter makes friends of unlikely creatures: a small gray cat named Martin Luther who presents him with a litter of kittens, or a Red Admiral butterfly, which Peter believes is a fairy, or at the very least a good omen. And so it is that as Peter grows to manhood he continues to pursue the Red Admiral and finds his life's vocation, painting, and his love, Anne.