Trove: A Woman’s Search for Truth and Buried Treasure is a beautifully written and hilarious memoir that focuses on Sandra A. Miller and her life being upended when she begins an armchair treasure hunt. With $10,000 worth of buried gold coins somewhere in New York City, she and a man(who is not her husband she insists) go on the hunt. This journey though connects with her constant journey in life hunting for some sort of buried treasure. This work is both a physical and a metaphorical treasure hunt that speaks to how life leaves us hunting for more.

Miller notes at the start of her memoir that she has been hunting for treasure since she was five years old. She would look for little bits and pieces on the sidewalks, under trees, and anywhere she could think of. This searching for dropped and hidden things helped her to escape from her volatile parents and her often unhappy childhood. As her hunt for gold begins her partner is her friend David, who was much more interested in taking on this adventure than her husband Mark. After the death of her mother, who ran the gamut in terms of emotions and behaviors around Miller, she finds the treasure hunt forcing her to deal with painful pieces of her past and she must confront the true source of the sorrow she has felt. This will become not only a hunt for gold, but also a hunt for what she has been looking for her entire life.

Miller’s writing in Trove delves into her own feelings in a way that makes you a treasure hunter yourself. You are following the map through her memories and also through her thoughts as she examines the issues she has with her mother and the intense desire she has to find the actual buried treasure. Moving between the past and the present Miller provides such a strong and detailed picture that you will be engaged from the first page. She wants you to understand and to see her own journey, which will in many ways help you to also process your own possibly buried feelings. Miller has done a great deal of self reflection to bring this book to life and in doing so she connects so strongly with her reader that you will feel personally tied to her story. You can get your copy of Trove: A Woman’s Search for Truth and Buried Treasure today.

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