The Berry Pickers

Peters’s Andrew Carnegie Medal–winning debut centers on a Mi’kmaq family who travel from Nova Scotia to Maine each summer to harvest blueberries. The lives of the family members are forever changed in June 1962 when the youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, vanishes without a trace. Ruthie’s older brother Joe is the last to see her. A guilt-ridden Joe goes on to spend his entire life haunted by his sister’s disappearance. Meanwhile, a young girl named Norma grows up in Maine with wealthy yet secretive parents and is plagued by strange dreams. The story alternates between Joe’s and Norma’s points of view. Each new chapter has an introductory title that signals when the perspectives switch. Indigenous narrators Á’a:líya Warbus (Stó:lō Nation) and Jordan Waunch (Métis) give voice to Joe and Norma, respectively, as the novel follows their lives over the next 50 years and the mystery of Ruthie’s disappearance is slowly revealed.