A review by bear_ridge_tarot
Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

challenging emotional inspiring reflective

4.5

 The memoir of a powerful Indigenous woman’s coming of age in the Pacific Northwest. It is a weaving of grief, trauma, abuse, and the complexities of being Native told in such a way that makes the reader feel it all. I listened to this on audiobook narrated by Rainy Fields and could not have been more enthralled with the flow of the story. The struggles of mental health, combined with post-traumatic stress disorder, lends weight to the book which is already heavy with emotion. 

Rainy Fields narrates this with compassion and passion. The tone was perfection, invoking every emotion with perfection. It made the experience more heartfelt than if I’d only read the novel. The rawness of this stream-of-consciousness type story is a type of perfection that cannot come from something more polished. It tells the story of a miserable life, yes, but one that also includes survival and a unique understanding of the inner landscape that isn’t easy to earn. When you read a memoir, especially one penned by the subject, it tends to be neutral in judgment, or even overly flattering. That is not the case with Heart Berries. It is a cathartic, brutally honest telling of a life lived. 
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