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BLACKBERRY WINTER
by Sarah Jio
Plume, September 2012
286 pages
$15.00
ISBN: 0452298385


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The year is 1933, the date is May 2, the place is Seattle, and suddenly it is winter as a devastating snow storm hits. Fast forward: it's the present, and again it's May 2 in Seattle, and again there is an out-of-season snow storm, a "Blackberry Winter." Claire, a reporter married into the extremely wealthy newspaper family owning her paper, is given a "fluff" assignment to tie today's storm to the storm on the same day in 1933.

As Claire investigates the previous storm, looking for an angle, she discovers that a three-year-old boy, Daniel, went missing in the snow on that cold day during the Depression and that the police seemed anxious to classify his disappearance as a runaway. His mother, Vera Ray, was certain that he did not run away, and Claire also finds it impossible to believe that a three-year-old would venture out into the snow on his own.

Both Vera and Claire attempt to find the boy, albeit from nearly a century's distance in time. The chapters alternate, as in the past Vera meets Daniel's wealthy father and then leaves him without letting him know of her pregnancy…and in the present, Claire's marriage to a wealthy man is threatened by her loss of a pregnancy. The parallels are obvious, and I found it interesting that even in the language the parallels continue. "Wow" as an exclamation is used in Vera's story, as it was coming into vogue, and it is used in the present, where it is also in vogue after a hiatus of some 50 years. This level of detail is something that shines through in the author's depiction of the two time frames, and it serves to make each come alive.

The setting, the families, the love of a child: all of these end up forming a connection between the two moments in time. This is an incredibly tangled story, and it would be unfair to give details that shed light on the connections Jio forms. However, it is fair to say that they make sense and give substance to both the lives of Claire and Vera.

The book throws us more into the lives of the characters than it does into the mystery of what happened to Daniel (or to his mother, Vera), and because of this the reader is much more invested in an understanding of the relationships surrounding Claire and Vera than in the resolution of Daniel's and Vera's fates. Nonetheless, Jio does a terrific job of tying it all together and leaving the reader with a well-constructed ending. Jio really makes the reader care; the tears made it difficult to read the last few pages.

§ Sharon Mensing is the Head of School of Emerald Mountain School, an independent school in the mountains of Colorado, where she lives, reads, and enjoys the outdoors.

Reviewed by Sharon Mensing, October 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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