What I love most about this book is the love. There is also anger and sorrow and shame. But so much love that persists and protects and supports and heals.” –Naomi Mackinnon, Consumed by Ink

A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that remains unsolved for nearly 50 years.

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, is seen sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a field before mysteriously vanishing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, who was the last person to see Ruthie, is devastated by his sister’s disappearance, and her loss ripples through his life for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as an only child in an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, while her mother is overprotective of Norma, who is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem to be too real to be her imagination. As she grows older, Norma senses there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she pursues her family’s secret for decades.

A stunning debut novel, The Berry Pickers is a riveting story about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

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Shelf Life Books | Calgary Public Library | Audible

BE CURIOUSER

• Fig Tree acquires Peters’ “exquisitely moving” debut novel The Berry Pickers – The Bookseller
• The Book Shelf: The Berry Pickers is a beautiful debut novel about family and family secrets – Saltwire
• From the Library: Sisters, Friends, Mothers and Daughters – Consumed by Ink
• “The result is a cogent and heartfelt look at the ineffable pull of family ties.” – Publishers Weekly
• On My Bookshelf: The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters – The Meadford Independent