The Berry Pickers

Above: The Berry Pickers: A Novel by Amanda Peters (Mi’kmaq Descent). 

The novel begins in July 1962 when 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.  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.