The Berry Pickers
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The threads that bond a Canadian Mi’kmaq family become knotted in Amanda Peters’ poignant debut novel. Joe is just six years old when his little sister, Ruthie, vanishes without a trace while the family is blueberry picking in Maine—and the weight of the mysterious loss changes them all forever. Elsewhere in Maine, an only child named Norma grows up with the uneasy feeling that not everything in her household is what it seems. Peters weaves the stories of Joe’s and Norma’s parallel lives together with incredible detail, and narrators Aaliya Warbus and Jordan Waunch capture the deep emotion and richness of her writing as they trade off chapters. From marriages and miscarriages to residential schools and racism, The Berry Pickers explores the lives of a loving Indigenous family and the lengths that people will go to bury—and seek out—the truth. It’s a thoughtful, empathetic tale of love and loss that will stick with you long after you’ve finished listening.
Customer Reviews
Fast Pace
Wonderfully written. Fast pace and keeps you interested.
Solid
It starts off a little slow, but around 30% and it starts to pick up. It’s quite interesting.