Mark Twain wrote: The true desperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most infamous advantage of his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up before a host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child.
Category: Growing Up
Average Rating: 4.0
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a family, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years
July 1962. Following in the tradition of Indigenous workers from Nova Scotia, a Mi'kmaq family arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family's youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister's disappearance for years to come.
In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective.
Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren't telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.
Rating: 4
This is a very poignant, moving story. It's sad on multiple levels. The story is plausible, but not very likely. It's well written and well paced with complex, well developed characters. The narration by Aaliya Warbus and Jordan Waunch is satisfactory, but there are some blemishes such as mispronunciations and pauses where they don't belong. Even the ending is sad, but satisfying. Anyone who enjoys character-driven stories about human nature and behavior will probably appreciate this story.
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