The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters
The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters
1 Rating(s)
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The Berry Pickers

Author: Amanda Peters

Narrator: Aaliya Warbus, Jordan Waunch

Unabridged: 8 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 10/31/2023


Synopsis

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.

About Amanda Peters

AMANDA PETERS is a writer of Mi'kmaq and settler ancestry. Her debut novel, The Berry Pickers, was a critically acclaimed bestseller in Canada. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review and Filling Station. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for unpublished prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers’ Trust Rising Stars Program. Peters has a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto, and she is a graduate of the master of fine arts program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Amanda Peters lives and writes in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, with her fur babies, Holly and Pook. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Rachel on May 22, 2024

What a book!! And to think that I didn’t even want to read this book, and it is now one of my all time favorites! Did the title appeal to me? No. The cover? Not so much. The synopsis? Not really. But when I opened up this book, each page just took my breath away. I can’t remember the last time I rea......more

Goodreads review by Jasmine on May 01, 2023

The Berry Pickers is an immersive and stunningly written debut novel by Amanda Peters. Every summer, a Mi’kmaq family travels from Nova Scotia to Maine to pick berries. A few weeks into the season, the youngest child, Ruthie, vanishes without a trace. Her older brother Joe was the last person to see......more

Goodreads review by Daly on August 09, 2024

From the moment Ruthie, the youngest daughter of the Mi'kmaq family, goes missing from their berry farm, the mystery unfolds with gripping intensity. Where did she go? Is she still alive? Why did she leave? These questions haunt the family, revealing profound burdens of loss and unanswered questions......more

Goodreads review by Reads on April 29, 2024

Emotional damage......more

Goodreads review by Debra on October 26, 2023

July 1962 A Mi’kmaq family in need of money traveled from Nova Scotia to Maine to work in the berry fields. One day, four-year-old Ruthie went missing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, was the last person to see her, and he will be haunted for the rest of his life about her disappearance and the last m......more