Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island reserve in British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II, Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father — an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist — who was murdered under mysterious circumstances and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. (From Doubleday Canada)
