If you haven’t read Sarah Jio, you must remedy that – as soon as possible. 🙂

blackberry winterdrey’s thoughts:

I’ll start with a PSA – you’ll want a box of tissues within reach when you read Blackberry Winter. Because yes, you will cry.

It is the story of two women who have suffered through loss so heart-wrenching you can’t help but feel for them. Two women whose lives are one day connected by fate, and family ties.

Vera Ray fell in love with the wrong man, and is doing the best she can as she raises her son alone. Times are hard, but people don’t care. So she leaves three-year-old Daniel in bed while she works the night shift, because doing that for one night is better than getting kicked out into the streets because she can’t pay the rent. Right?

Then Daniel disappears.

Fast forward eighty years, and Seattle is covered under a blanket of snow again. Claire Aldridge is assigned to write a piece on the previous storm, but her fluff piece turns into something more when she learns of Daniel’s disappearance all those years ago. Her own loss may have something to do with it – that, and the slow crumbling of her marriage.

But Claire is nothing if not persistent, especially as pieces of the story start clicking into place.

Sarah Jio’s writing is magical in Blackberry Winter. Claire and Vera come to life so realistically I feel like I know them. And the emotions tug and pull at you, and you’ll be helpless at resisting (hence the need for the box of tissues). This isn’t just a story you read, it’s a story you experience, one you’ll remember for a while, and one – if you’re a re-reader like me – you’ll probably reach for again. Definitely add to your fall reading!

drey’s rating: Outstanding!

Claire Aldridge has suffered a terrible loss and although a year has passed, she is struggling to accept what cannot be changed, and in the process, realizes that her marriage to Ethan might very well be over. As she delves into her work as a newspaper reporter, mostly to numb herself against the pain, she stumbles across a story from the 1930′s. A story about a young mother by the name of Vera Ray, and her missing three-year-old son, Daniel who disappeared during a blackberry winter. Suspicious over why he was never found, Claire digs deeper. While searching clues, she comes across some similarities to her own life that she finds impossible to ignore.

I enjoyed how the story alternated between Claire's point of view in present day and Vera's in the past. I could feel every emotion the women experienced, and I shed a few tears reading this book.