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Fiction. Literature. 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.… (more)
User reviews
I really enjoyed this. It could have gone wrong a lot of ways - by being overly emotional or overly lecturing - but instead Peters simply tells a great story. She creates great characters who are fully fleshed out and creates a satisfying plot. Recommended.
In the early 1960s, four-year-old Ruthie, the youngest daughter of a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia, disappeared from a blueberry field in Maine where her family was employed for the summer. With almost no help from the authorities on account of their “transient” status, Ruthie’s
“It’s funny what you remember when something goes wrong. Something that would never stick in your memory on an ordinary day gets stuck there permanent.”
Norma has vague memories of her life before she was five years old. Growing up in Maine, the only child of a judge who is a tad distant and an overprotective mother, she is an inquisitive and perceptive child. Her vivid dreams, hushed conversations between her family members and her mother’s nervous reaction to her questions about their family do not escape her attention. She senses that there is much about her life that does not feel right – a belief that follows her into adulthood. Years later, after both her parents have passed on, her aunt shares the truth about their family – a revelation that will leave fifty-four-year-old Norma with more questions than answers.
“Fate is a trickster. He likes to set up all the clues just to see if you can put them together and make sense out of things you never thought to make sense of in the first place.”
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters is an incredibly moving story that revolves around themes of family, identity, loss, hope and grief. Spanning fifty years, the narrative is shared from dual perspectives in alternating chapters. Despite the non-linear transitions between past and present timelines, the narrative flows well and is not difficult to follow. Please note that there is no mystery here, and it is the journey of these characters that takes center stage in this novel.
The structure of the narrative allows us to explore the contrast between the trajectories of Norma’s and Joe’s lives and how one traumatic event impacts their individual worldviews. The author’s strength lies in her character development and depiction of complex human emotions. Losing Ruthie casts a shadow on Joe’s life and his being the last one to see her before she disappears haunts him throughout his adult life, and though there are aspects about adult Joe that might not arouse sympathy there's no doubt that he is a broken man and the author compels us to take a deeper look into his heart despite his flaws. Norma’s life is one of searching for a sense of belongingness despite growing up in the security of an affluent family who cares for her deeply. Given her trajectory, Norma’s reactions were commensurate with her character, though at times, especially toward the end, I thought Norma’s perspective could have been explored in more depth. However, this does not detract from the overall impact of the novel. The author approaches sensitive topics such as grief, the loss of a child, alcoholism, discrimination, and terminal illness, among others, with much sensitivity and compassion. Overall, I found this novel to be a thought-provoking, compelling read that I would not hesitate to recommend to those who enjoy emotionally charged family sagas.
I look forward to reading more from this talented debut author in the future.
“Even people who exude light and happiness have dark secrets. Sometimes, the lie becomes so entrenched it becomes the truth, hidden away in the deep recesses of the mind until death erases it, leaving the world a little different.”
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Aaliya Warbus and Jordan Waunch, who have done a wonderful job of breathing life into these characters and setting the tone for this beautifully written story.
Many thanks to RB Media and NetGalley for ALC of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. The Berry Pickers was published in the United States on October 31, 2023.
Joe and his sister, Ruthie, were resting after berry picking with their family on a
Heartbreaking story.
(Possibly spoilers below)
I would have liked more of Norma/Ruthie's thoughts after she learns the truth (and the author's thoughts). Which character is the worst/most guilty? Mother, father, or Aunt June? The desperate or the complicit? Does desperate even matter--many women (and men) were/are similarly desperate and do not resort to kidnapping. Though based on some of the memoirs I have read this year and at least one documentary I have watched, some international adoptees consider themselves kidnapped/bought and have varied thoughts on guilt.
This is a debut novel written by a mixed-race woman of Mi'kmaq and European ancestry, born and raised in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. It is set in Maine and Nova Scotia and is the tale of a Mi'kmaq family who comes to Maine to pick berries and one year their four year old
Amanda Peters debut novel takes place in her home area of Nova Scotia where she was raised a a member of the Glooscap First Nation. She sets up this story in dueling chapters written by the two main characters reminiscing about their life. We find out early on that in 1962, the
I enjoyed learning a bit about the Mi'kmaq people and their migratory life of labor and wish their lives were explained a bit more. The plot was interesting enough to propel my reading but the prologue kind of takes the mystery out.
Lines:
When we arrived from Nova Scotia, midsummer, a caravan of dark-skinned workers, laughing and singing, travelling through their overgrown and rusting world, the local folks turned their backs, our presence a testament to their failure to prosper.
The dreams were a mystery to me until Mother’s mind started to fail her, and those things stored in the deep dark of her conscience leapt out and started to flail about like fish on the lakeshore.
I’m fifty-six years old and I stay alive because my eighty-seven-year-old mother tells me she can’t watch another child die.
I lived my entire childhood in the shadow of infant ghosts. Their memory haunted my mother, and she carried them around with her, constantly tripping over their absence and blaming me for the fall.
my dreams had faded, like a watercolour left in the sunlight.
When I woke, my mouth dry and my head ringing with the bells of Chianti,
A smarter man would have seen that I was ruining the best thing in my life. But I can state, with full confidence, that I am not that clever.
Those cracks that I had been hammering into my life and into my marriage had become an earthquake of my own making, one too destructive for me to repair.
Desire in the dying is a cruel trick.
The family returns to their home on Nova Scotia but they are never the
The family’s story is interspersed with the story of Norma, the only daughter of a couple who struggled for years trying to have a baby before Norma came along. Norma’s mother refuses to let Norma out of her sight except for school, and Norma comes to feel stifled by her lonely life.
The Berry Pickers is a beautifully written debut novel, with characters the reader cares deeply about. We feel their pain and sadness and although you know where the story is going, it is the journey that keeps you reading this wonderful book. I give it my highest recommendation. Fans of Jacqueline Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean will like this one.
I'm waiting for the next Amanda.
This family's story alternates with that of another family, a local doctor, his wife, and their daughter Norma. Although the father is a doctor in high standing in the community, they aren't much happier. The mother is high strung, domineering and overprotective. Norma is rarely allowed out of the house except with family members. People often comment on Norma's complexion, which is darker than her parents', and she wonders why there are no baby pictures of herself in the family scrapbook. The family has a reason for everything: her complexion is due to some far-back Italian ancestors, and they were just too busy taking care of her (plus her mother's health was frail) to remember to take photos. The reader doesn't have to work very hard to figure out that Norma is really Ruthie, snatched by a woman who had suffered several miscarriages and whose mental health was in decline.
The rest of the novel plays out how the the truth behind Ruthie's disappearance and identity slowly comes to light. I actually enjoyed this book a lot more than the above description might suggest. The characters are well drawn and interesting, and the author writes beautifully about loss, grief, a sense of identity, and prejudice. There are a number of events that reveal how the loss of Ruthie has affected every member of the family, and Norma's family also suffers from the secret they must hide.
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813.6 |