The Berry Pickers: A Novel
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.
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Community Reviews
I did not want to put this book down! It grabbed me right from the start and wouldn't let go.
A little girl goes missing and it changes her family forever. Told from the point of view of two siblings, in alternating chapters, and how their lives unfold.
What’s it about?
It is 1962 and Ruthie is just four-years-old when she is taken from a berry patch in Maine. She is from a family of indigenous farm workers and although they search tirelessly Ruthie is never found. Norma grows up in Maine with strange dreams and an over-protective mother. As the years go forward she struggles to make sense of her world.
What did it make me think about?
Memories.
Should I read it?
This is a much loved novel so take my review as one person’s opinion. For me, the story does not ebb and flow much. It is depressing and stays depressing throughout. Joe and Norma are the two main characters that we hear from, and they both seem intent on only seeing the bad in their difficult lives. One of Norma’s most normal relationships was with her father- and yet when reflecting back on her father she muses, “It was unfair that I laughed so little with my father. Our conversations consisted mostly of complaints against my mother and his defense of her. I would have liked to laugh more with him, and I feel cheated and a little annoyed that he never gave me the chance.” Without some moments of levity or joy interspersed in this story, I just felt pummeled by Joe and Norma’s pain- to the point that it became mundane.
Quote-
“Some secrets are so dark that it’s best they remain buried. Even people who exude light and happiness have dark secrets.”
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