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The Berry Pickers: A Novel
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Original price was: $27.00.$14.99Current price is: $14.99.
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years
“A stunning debut about love, race, brutality, and the balm of forgiveness.” —People, A Best New Book
July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia 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.
“A harrowing tale of Indigenous family separation . . . [Peters] excels in writing characters for whom we can’t help rooting . . . With The Berry Pickers, Peters takes on the monumental task of giving witness to people who suffered through racist attempts of erasure like her Mi’kmaw ancestors.” —The New York Times Book Review
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Product name:
The Berry Pickers: A Novel
Price:
Original price was: $27.00.$14.99Current price is: $14.99.
KLBoehm –
This heartfelt, beautifully written family drama revolves around the disappearance of four-year-old Ruthie, the youngest in a family of indiginous berry pickers based in Maine. She was kidnapped by an off-kilter woman who had been grieving the loss of several pregnancies, and her complicit husband, a local judge who prepared a false birth certificate for Ruthie under the name of Norma. She navigates a sheltered life punctuated with disturbing dreams of an apparent other mother and a brother who seem real but are beyond her understanding.
The other narrator is Joe, her brother, now 56 and seriously ill, reminiscing about his shortcomings and the ever-present scar that Ruthie’s disappearance has left on his family. As a direct result of anger issues and alcohol abuse, he has missed a lot in life, including a relationship with his daughter. Ruthie/Norma and Joe undergo transformative changes in the aftermath of her kidnapping and his diagnosis of a terminal illness.
Their siblings Ben and Mae play pivotal roles and serve to bridge key story timelines. Other characters are her mother’s sister, her aunt June, with whom Norma shares a deep love, and the family friend Alice, who becomes her therapist and confidant. The book spans fifty years during which time the reader gains insight and empathy with the characters such that the outcomes of their stories are deeply felt. Watching how they move forward toward some semblance of peace in the face of adversity is a riveting experience, not to be missed.
C Baxter –
This book is just spectacular. An education and an emotional experience like none other. It will stay in my mind for a very long time.
Romina Hamzeu –
Brought for a friend, it’s her favourite
Aly H –
Every summer, a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia travels to the blueberry fields of Maine during picking season for work. The summer of 1962 is no different, until four-year old Ruthie suddenly goes missing, vanishing seemingly without a trace.
The Berry Pickers is a dual perspective novel that follows what happened after Ruthie’s disappearance. The first narrator, Joe, is Ruthie’s older brother. He was six-years old and the last one to see his sister while they were in the berry fields. The second narrator is Norma, a woman from an affluent family with highly overprotective parents, who over time begins to realize that her home life may not be everything that she thought it was.
This was beautifully written and emotionally gripping. The characters deal with so much devastation and heartbreak throughout, and yet, there is reverence in the power of hope. The complex dynamics of the different family relationships shown grips the reader by their soul. The prominence of grief in this story was so strong that the emotion almost became another character, and the antagonist to so many across the pages. The stories of both narrators are intricately woven, and their journey to self actualization is heartbreaking and raw. It’s impossible to give too many details without spoiling the plot, but ultimately, this is a story of fear, betrayal, regret, and unconditional love.
Madeleine Dorkin –
I’m no genius but i thought i knew the story line within the first chapter. Maybe everyone does, but I’ll call myself smart. However, this story was amazingly interesting and told so beautifully. Brilliant or not, I loved the characters, the story, and the end. Great great book. Highly recommend!!
Mrs Watson –
Quick service and book in excellent condition on arrival.
MRSN –
Gave this 4, rather than five, because there just was not enough background on the pickers. Had to look up all info about blueberries, and picking them. Needed a bit more info. The story was wonderful, unimaginable, and finally just good!!
The indigenous folks put up with so much malarkey. Every time I was reading, I didn’t want to quit. Would have liked knowing more about the characters, but just because I liked them. Not needed for story. A bit different kind of story, sorry the times were hard for indigenous folks. A lot of different races were treated badly in the past. A shame. Lovely story anyway.
S McHenry –
What a brilliant own voices debut! This book is heartachingly beautiful…difficult topics, beautifully done.
Peters tells the tale of an indigenous family, berry pickers in Maine, who experience the kidnapping of the youngest member of their family (Ruthie). You will follow along on Ruthie’s journey throughout life, experiencing times of contentment and times of questioning/confusion. More importantly, or what I think brings the most weight to this book, you will experience the turmoil that impacts the family Ruthie left behind. Tragedy impacts people differently, and this really comes through in this story. Loss, regrets, love, despair, hope…it’s all here in this moving tale. This is a new author that I will follow, in hopes that there are more works in the future.
Katherine Y –
Sadness and desperation overwhelm a Mi’kmaq family when the youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, disappears. In this story set in the early 1960s, a large family travels to Maine from Nova Scotia every year to pick berries. The family sets up camp in the same place to work in the same fields. Joe and Ruthie are the two youngest siblings and are especially close. One day, Joe leaves his sister, and she climbs on a rock to eat her sandwich. That’s the last anyone sees of her. No trace of her can be found.
The family searches and searches, never giving up hope she is somewhere still alive. They stay long after the picking season ends and exhaust every resource to find her. Years pass, and the family always returns to pick berries and search for her. An older brother thinks he spots a teenage Ruthie in Boston. She was walking with a woman. He calls to her but loses sight of her in a vast crowd. Joe, meanwhile, suffering from tremendous guilt, loses his focus. He does odd jobs and travels to California, leaving all his family and friends behind. Another brother dies in a fight.
In a nearby state, another story unfolds. Norma grows up in an oppressive atmosphere. She has dreams that seem so real of a campfire, a woman calling to her, and people talking in a different language. When she tries to explain this to her mother and father, her mother claims terrible headaches and withdraws from her. Luckily, she has an aunt and her aunt’s best friend to counsel her. Still, Norma knows deep inside that her family is hiding something.
I couldn’t stop reading this book. The story pulls you in, and you feel as if you are discovering the facts about Norma’s heritage along with her. It’s a sad and beautiful book. Decisions made in haste have a far-reaching impact for decades. I recommend this book to those looking for a well-written, gripping, and haunting story.
Four eyes bookworm –
What a wonderful story! It took me just a bit of time to situate myself into the characters in the early chapters, but once I did, well, I’ve had a bit of a difficult time letting them go now that the story is done. Thank you Amanda Peters for doing such a great job weaving a cultural journey into this sometimes sad yet somehow uplifting story. I read the last chapters in tears and won’t soon forget Joe and Ruthie.