The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters – 307 pages

Book Blurb:

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.

My Review: 4.5 stars

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The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters is a novel not to be missed. I went into the book completely blind, and it served me well. I still can’t believe this is a debut.

When Ruthie, the youngest in a large Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia goes missing, her family is wrought with grief. Joe, one of the protagonists suffers the most as he was the last person with Ruthie. His life is shattered in many ways, both physically and emotionally. Not a day goes by where he doesn’t feel guilt and/or shame for his behavior. 

We learn early on that Ruthie was taken by a woman unable to hold a pregnancy. She is overprotective to a fault for fears of Ruthie (now Norma) getting hurt or recognized. Norma has dreams that relate to her family, but she was too young at four years old to have any real memories of her earlier family. Norma’s parents completely ignore her dreams by shushing them away.

There is a lot of grief in this book, but there is also many lessons about forgiveness and hope. Peters also touches on alcoholism, discrimination, and terminal illness. At its heart, this book centers around the meaning of family, the hope of reunion and the ties that bond one person to another.

I will be first in line to pick up Peters next book. The writing was exquisite.

Quotes I liked:

Dying is something I have to do alone.”

“…I drew a picture of Ruthies face on the back of my eyelids.”

“When you’re an only child, semi-imprisoned, books become more than paper between hard cardboard, more than the alphabet organized into words and printed on a page.”

“Anger is exhausting. Holding on to it will drain the life out of you.”

“Time quickens the older you get, as if the universe is trying to push you toward the finish line, to make room for the younger, the stronger, to mark your brief place in history and move on.”