by: Amanda Peters
Goodreads description:
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 community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty 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, 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.
Helen says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓
This was my favorite book of the month. It took me a few tries to get into it, but I was hooked once I did. You know from the beginning that a kidnapping happened, but slowly the details emerge about what actually went down. It was thought-provoking about the haves and have nots and nature vs. nurture. I started to lose interest in the last 1/3 of the book. I grew impatient waiting for the grand reveal, but the ending was totally worth it!
Holly says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓1/4
Another month of great reading! The Berry Pickers is a beautifully written very moving story. It is hard to believe that this is Amanda Peters’ first novel – I thought it was remarkable. There is quite a bit of brutality in this book, and I kept thinking about Mae, the family matriarch, and how she could have possibly continued to function day after day. I won’t lie, the book can be quite depressing, but it is well worth the read.
Helen and Holly Hit the Books 