Amanda Peters is a Canadian writer of Mi’kmaq and settler descent, who lives in Nova Scotia. The Berry Pickers (2023), her first novel, was inspired by stories of her father's family, who, like so many other First Nations' people, faced hardships and challenges as they struggled to survive within a larger post-colonial culture. From the very first sentence, the Berry Pickers also explores the complex nature of personal identity and the very real threat of its erasure.
The book opens in July, 1962, when a Mi'kmaq family, migrant farmers who are used to traveling seasonally for work, travel from Nova Scotia to pick blueberries in Maine. They have made this trip in the past, and it is typically productive, a familiar and even enjoyable journey, as they reconnect with others in their community. This year, however, tragedy strikes. The family's youngest child, a four-year old girl named Ruthie, vanishes as if into thin air. The family and their farming community search for the child, to no avail, and when they ask the police for help, little is offered. Ruthie, a young person of color, and an outsider, proves to be of little interest to local authorities. If she were a white child, the outcome likely would have been different.
The Berry Pickers unfolds for approximately five decades from here, chronicling the aftermath of the family's great loss and the impact of their grief. The story is told through two perspectives. Ruthie's older brother Joe, who feels most responsible for her disappearance, is both haunted by her disappearance and determined to find his sister. Norma, the only child of two remote, yet over-protective parents, has disturbing and recurrent dreams and visions that seem to hint at another life lived in the past. Together, the two of them ultimately make sense of the mystery, the family secrets and trauma that weave their way through their lives, and the lives of others who figure in the narrative.
At times painful and unsettling, The Berry Pickers is ultimately a reflection on the endurance of love and forgiveness, against all odds.