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The berry pickers : a novel
Book
2023
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Summary
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years

"A stunning debut about love, race, brutality, and the balm of forgiveness." -- People , A Best New Book

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.

"A harrowing tale of Indigenous family separation . . . [Peters] excels in writing characters for whom we can't help rooting . . . With The Berry Pickers , Peters takes on the monumental task of giving witness to people who suffered through racist attempts of erasure like her Mi'kmaw ancestors." -- The New York Times Book Review
Fiction/Biography Profile
Characters
Ruthie (Girl), Kidnapped, Kidnapped by a white New England woman;renamed as Norma;troubled by recurring dreams;attempts to uncover her family secret
Joe (Boy), Grieving, Lost his sister mysteriously in Maine;distraught for years;guilt-ridden;resorts to alcohol as a coping mechanism
Genre
Fiction
Topics
Brothers and sisters
Indigenous peoples
Kidnapping
Memories
Guilt
Imaginary friends
Family secrets
Rage
Alcoholism
Reunions
Setting
Maine - New England (U.S.)
Time Period
1962 -- 20th century
Trade Reviews
Publishers Weekly Review
Peters's enthralling debut tracks the lives of two siblings from an Indigenous Canadian family working in Maine as seasonal berry pickers. In the summer of 1962, four-year-old Ruthie is kidnapped by a white New England woman, who renames her Norma and raises the girl as her daughter. Meanwhile, Ruthie's brother Joe, who was six years old at the time of the kidnapping, never forgives himself for not keeping an eye on his sister. Joe's perspective alternates with Norma's, who shares her dim recollections of her real mother ("It's just a dream," she's told by her new parents) with her imaginary friend, "Ruthie." Joe spends most of his life guilt-ridden by his sister's disappearance. Norma, meanwhile, is haunted by the puzzling gaps in her family history: there are no pictures of her before the age of five, and her skin is darker than her parents' (she's told that she takes after an "Italian great-grandfather"). Joe acts out in rage and resorts to alcohol to cope, while Norma builds a life for herself as a teacher and a wife. Peters traces their experiences over several decades, and their reunion, when it finally comes, is powerfully rendered. The result is a cogent and heartfelt look at the ineffable pull of family ties. Agent: Marilyn Biderman, Transatlantic. (Oct.)
Booklist Review
Peters' debut combines narrative skill and a poignant story for a wonderful novel to which many readers will gravitate. In 1962, an Indigenous Mi'kmaq family is in Maine to pick summer blueberries when their youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, disappears. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, saw her last. Told in alternating, first-person chapters from Joe and a narrator called Norma, the novel follows the painful reverberations of Ruthie's disappearance across five decades. Peters wisely never makes the reader wonder if Norma is Ruthie; we know that she is, which allows more compelling questions to come into focus. How much do Joe's subsequent life events and choices trace back to this first major trauma? Is his lifelong guilt justified? How does Norma/Ruthie reconcile love for the white mother who stole her from her birth mother and for the white aunt who saved her from a lonely childhood but knew the secret all along? The story is told in braided strands, and it is a testament to Peters' ability that both strands fascinate. Indigenous stories like this matter, and while little is easy for Peters' characters, in the end, for all of them--even for those who stole a small child--there is hope.
Kirkus Review
An Indigenous family is forever changed after one of their own goes missing. Peters' debut novel explores the lives of a Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia as they grapple with their decades-old trauma. In 1962, Ruthie, the family's youngest daughter, goes missing from the berry farm in Maine where they work every summer. Told from alternating perspectives, the novel follows Joe, Ruthie's older brother and the last person to see her before she went missing, and Norma, a young girl living in Maine with an aloof father and overbearing mother. Lying on his deathbed, Joe thinks back on his life, which has been filled with grief, rage, and all-consuming guilt: "People have given me their time, their love, their bodies, their secrets. And I've given so little." After a brutal act of violence, Joe spent the next few decades running from himself and his sins, so as not to inflict more harm onto the ones he loves the most. Meanwhile, Norma recounts her life, which was plagued by a different kind of guilt, one that caused her to always be the dutiful daughter--the daughter who didn't ask too many questions, ignored the lack of baby pictures, and chose to forget the vivid and painful dreams that plagued her childhood ("Each time I woke, I grieved for the woman cloaked in darkness and I tried to call out to her"). Eventually, Norma goes to college, becomes a teacher, and falls in love--and she spends the next few decades finding a way to live with the unsettling feeling that something isn't quite right with her life. As Norma's true identity is barely concealed, the novel is less concerned with maintaining a mystery than with exploring how brutality ripples out, touching everything and everyone in its wake. Peters beautifully explores loss, grief, hope, and the invisible tether that keeps families intact even when they are ripped apart. A quiet and poignant debut from a writer to watch. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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