Park City author Melissa Marsted drove her Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van through the Deep South this spring, her dog Clover riding shotgun, tracing the route a monarch butterfly takes from Canada to Mexico. The trip became "Flora's Winged Adventure," the 13th book in her "Wildlife Adventures for Young Readers" series, now available in print.
The book follows Flora, a monarch butterfly, south from Maine along the Appalachian Trail through Georgia, then west through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas before ending at El Rosario, Mexico. Along the way, Flora visits Shenandoah National Park, New River Gorge National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains.
It is the first book in the series to focus on the East Coast.
"I wanted to tap into some of the historic parks on the East Coast because I have pretty much covered the national parks west of the Continental Divide," Marsted told the Park Record on Aug. 14.
Marsted co-wrote "Flora's Winged Adventure" with Alexandra Lehner, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife technician based on Lake Superior in Wisconsin. Lehner also illustrated the book, her second project with Lucky Penny Publications after illustrating the 2025 title "Rascal's Year of Adventures." Every page pairs Flora with another pollinator, including bats, hummingbirds and moths, and the book includes a migration-route map and a page showing the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly.
Polly Hopkins, a designer based in Bend, Oregon, designed the book. Hopkins previously designed an unfinished Marsted project, a collection of essays from people evacuated during the 2008 California wildfires. Marsted lost her own Santa Barbara home in those fires and relocated to Park City in 2012.
The release marks another milestone for Lucky Penny Publications. The company was accepted into the Children's Book Council, a nonprofit trade association of children's book publishers, in July. "Flora's Winged Adventure" is the first title published under that membership, according to the publisher's blog.
Park City Library Director Adriane Herrick Juarez endorsed the book in a written statement, saying it transforms the monarch's migration into a story that will inspire wonder, curiosity and compassion in young readers.
Marsted, who serves on the Summit County Library Board according to her LinkedIn profile, has conducted readings in all 29 Utah counties. In a July 24 interview with the Park Record, she described visiting a school in Hanksville where the entire student body fit in one classroom.
"Flora's Winged Adventure" is available through luckypennypublications.com and Amazon, and will be sold at select national park and state park visitor centers. Marsted has one state left to visit: Alaska.
