The Berry Pickers

Amanda Peters

Once in awhile you read a book that you just can’t put down. For me, The Berry Pickers was one of those. I read it while I was eating breakfast and while I was cooking supper, I read it when I should have been going to bed at night, and I read it whenever I got a chance in between.

In July 1962 a tight-knit Mi’kmaw family from Nova Scotia makes their annual trip to Maine to spend the summer working in the blueberry fields. A few weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, disappears without a trace. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, the last person to see her, blames himself for her disappearance and carries that guilt for the rest of his life.

Elsewhere in Maine, Norma, an only child, grows up in an affluent home with an overprotective mother and an emotionally distant father. Troubled by recurring dreams in early childhood, Norma grows up sensing that there are secrets that her parents are keeping hidden from her.

Told in the first person in alternating chapters that span five decades, Joe and Norma’s stories, read more like memoirs than fiction. In this stunning debut novel, Amanda Peters has also brought even her supporting characters to life.

The Berry Pickers is a gripping story of broken lives, family secrets, the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love. The author also handles sensitive topics including grief, the loss of a child, alcoholism, discrimination, and terminal illness with sensitivity and compassion.

The novel, which was the Reader’s Digest Book Club pick for November, was also the winner of the 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize and the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. I am absolutely delighted to learn that the author is working on a screenplay based on the book and that she also has a second novel in the works. Her first one will stay with me for a long time.