Tell Me What I Am by Una Mannion

 

Summary (from the publisher): Two women wrenched apart by a family member’s disappearance must find a way back to each other in this haunting page-turner by the author of A Crooked Tree.

Nessa Garvey’s sister Deena vanished without a trace in Philadelphia in 2004. In all that time, Nessa has never once doubted what her instincts told her: her sister’s ex-husband has gotten away with an unspeakable crime.

Nessa’s niece, Ruby, is raised by her father, the man Nessa suspects, in rural Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain. Ruby learns how to hunt, how the plants and trees grow, how to avoid making her father angry. The one question she longs to ask is the one she knows she cannot voice: What really happened to her mother?

Over fourteen years, four hundred miles apart, these two women slowly begin to unearth the family history of insidious power and control that has shaped them both in such different ways. But can they reach each other in time?

Tell Me What I Am is a riveting, indelible tour de force of buried secrets and unlikely resilience.

Review: I received a copy of this book from HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review. 

In 2004, Nessa Garvey's sister left for work as a NICU nurse and never came home. The family is sure that her ex-husband has killed her in order to gain custody of their four-year-old daughter Ruby. Ine one stroke, Nessa has lost her sister but also her niece, who is whisked away to rural Vermont by her father and access to her mother's side of the family is refused. 

For fourteen years, Nessa is consumed by her sister's disappearance and her niece's welfare. She misses out on relationships and moving forward in her own life, unable to let go of the agony of her sister's unsolved disappearance. Meanwhile, her young niece grows up with no knowledge of her path, being led to believe that her mother left her. She is constantly on edge, trying to please her father who is angered by the least provocation. But slowly, as Ruby approaches her 18th birthday, she begins to uncover inconsistencies in her father's story just as his anger starts to be uncontrollable. 

I have to admit that I judged this book by its cover and blurb and assumed it was another murder mystery/thriller. But this book surprised me with the beauty of its writing and the depth of its emotional development in its characters. Rather than a murder mystery, this is an exploration of a loss and the reverberations of that loss that spill across years and many lives. It's pretty evident from the beginning who killed Deena. Instead, this is about the survivors and how they move forward from Deena's loss and also how Ruby and Nessa slowly move back towards one another. 

In some ways, this is a coming-of-age story. Ruby is such a beautiful and strong character. As she comes into her own across the course of the novel, despite her father's attempts to subdue her will, she increasingly defies his instructions and mandates and makes her own decisions and choices. This is also a powerful love story of the bond between sisters. Nessa never gives up or moves on from her the loss of her sister and refuses to accept that Ruby is permanently gone. The fight to maintain some tenuous piece of Ruby's life, even from a distance, was admirable and such a gift to her missing sister, who was no longer there to watch out for her daughter herself. If only we could all have as devoted sisters and aunts as Nessa Garvey.  

This was a beautiful and heartbreaking novel that truly looks at the underbelly of domestic violence, and the ways the system fails to protect victims. 

Stars: 4