The Berry Pickers
Ratings41
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings41
Average rating4.3
From Amazon:
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 family, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years
July 1962. Following in the tradition of Indigenous workers from Nova Scotia, a Mi’kmaq family 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 fans 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
Exquisite writing, both in terms of language and emotional power. Many sentences I had to pause to savor. Peters is a gifted writer and empath.
It is impossible to say much about this book without revealing spoilers, so here's a quick safe rundown of key points. First, Peters got the tone right. There were many angles she could've taken: misery porn, rage, handwringing. The way she crafted it was moving and effective. And second, I really want to talk about some aspects of the book, so please just read it and let's chat over coffee or a walk?
It's so sad the life Naomi had to lead hidden away from the world when she was young. Finally when the truth comes out and she finds out she's been lied to for all those years! I was hoping Ben would catch up to her at the protest!
This was a 3 star read for me not because it was badly written or anything like it. The writing was good and (honestly) for a story without much substance it carried on well.
But this book should not be called mystery or mystery thriller because anyone with a brain and even an ounce of critical thinking would have figured out where Ruthie went and who Norma is by the 2nd chapter.
I have to say I was a bit put off by the book because of this... I expected a mystery, a real cold case that is 50 years old, something that will speak to how badly the Natives were treated by the Americans and Canadians but nope, nothing like it, not really. Everything was very surface level.
It did give me the feels and I was emotionally afflicted for a while but
A story about a girl kidnapped from her Native American family and raised by white parents, as well as the anguish of her family she leaves behind.
It's a pretty compelling plot line although I didn't find myself super awed after finishing it, hence the 4 stars.
