The Berry Pickers A Novel

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Winner of the 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize • Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

July 1962. Four-year-old Ruthie disappears from the blueberry fields of Maine where her Mi’kmaq family has come to work for the summer. Her six-year-old brother Joe is the last to see her, sitting on her favorite rock at the field’s edge—a moment that will haunt him for decades.

Meanwhile, in another part of Maine, a girl named Norma grows up as the only child of a wealthy but emotionally distant family. She’s plagued by dreams that feel more like memories, visions she can’t quite shake. Something doesn’t add up about her childhood, and her mother’s overprotectiveness only deepens the mystery. As Norma matures, she becomes determined to uncover the truth her parents have been hiding.

Amanda Peters’ stunning debut weaves these two stories together with devastating precision, exploring the long shadow cast by Indigenous family separation and the search for truth across nearly fifty years. People calls it “a stunning debut about love, race, brutality, and the balm of forgiveness,” while The New York Times Book Review praises Peters for “giving witness to people who suffered through racist attempts of erasure like her Mi’kmaw ancestors.”

Perfect for readers who loved The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this is a riveting exploration of trauma, persistence, and the unbreakable bonds of family—a story that will stay with you long after the final page.

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