Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Come hear Amanda talk about how she infused herself and her personal information into the story, talk about her end-of-chapter hooks, her race, shout out to Women's History Month, the character she she liked and readers hated, as well as a question she was never asked. You don't want to miss it.
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears from Maine's blueberry fields, sparking a mystery that will haunt survivors, destroy a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.
“A stunning debut about love, race, brutality and the balm of forgiveness.” —People, A Best New Book
️July 1962. A Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. A few weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the youngest child in the family, disappears. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on his favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain devastated by his sister's disappearance for years.
In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child in a wealthy family. His father is emotionally distant, his mother overprotective and frustrating. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows up, Norma gradually realizes that there is something her parents aren't telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she spent decades trying to discover this family secret.
For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this stunning debut from a vibrant new voice in fiction is a captivating novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love through time.
“A harrowing story of separation of Aboriginal families. . . [Peters] excels at writing characters that you can't help but root for. . . With The Berry Pickers, Peters takes on the monumental task of bearing witness to people who have suffered from racist attempts at erasure, like his Mi'kmaq ancestors. —The New York Times Book Review
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