About this item

"Heart Berries is an epic take -- an Iliad for the indigenous. It is the story of one First Nation woman and her geographic, emotional, and theological search for meaning in a colonial world...Terese is a world-changing talent, and I recommend this book with 100% of my soul." -- Sherman Alexie, author of You Don't Have to Say You Love Me Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie 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.