**Sum­ma­ry of “The Berry Pick­ers: Joe”**

The chap­ter begins with the nar­ra­tor recall­ing the day Ruthie went miss­ing, marked by the relent­less black­flies. He reflects on the store rumors claim­ing that Indige­nous peo­ple have a sour blood that keeps the bugs away, a notion he dis­miss­es as false. He remem­bers how his moth­er would treat their bites with pulped alder bark. The set­ting is June 1962, in an area with few hous­es along Route 9, where they had come from Nova Sco­tia for the berry-pick­ing sea­son.

Mr. Ellis, the landown­er, had old, dilap­i­dat­ed prop­er­ty, con­trast­ing with his expan­sive, man­i­cured fields. The nar­ra­tor, Joe, viewed it as a “man­sion,” illus­trat­ing his pover­ty com­pared to Ellis’s seem­ing wealth. After their arrival, Joe’s father left to fetch more berry pick­ers, includ­ing famil­iar faces like Ger­ald and Frankie, indi­cat­ing an estab­lished com­mu­ni­ty. Joe grap­ples with the idea that kind­ness is nec­es­sary, as advised by his father, to main­tain peace among the work­ers.

As they set up their camp, Ruthie, described as a ner­vous child, clung close to Joe while diverg­ing from the row­dy boys at night. Mem­o­ries of past sum­mers and fam­i­ly dynam­ics sur­face, empha­siz­ing their frag­ment­ed upbring­ing shaped by the Indi­an agen­t’s reg­u­la­tions. Night­time gath­er­ings involve tra­di­tion­al sto­ries and omi­nous dis­cus­sions about lost chil­dren, reflect­ing deep fears and cul­tur­al ten­sions.

Despite their strug­gles, Joe recalls sweet moments shared with Ruthie, who’s depict­ed as inno­cent and gen­tle. The chapter’s tone shifts dra­mat­i­cal­ly when Ruthie goes miss­ing after Joe throws bread to crows, ignit­ing fran­tic search­es led by their par­ents. The fam­i­ly’s anx­i­ety esca­lates, com­pound­ed by tense inter­ac­tions with the indif­fer­ent police. Joe’s emo­tion­al tur­moil is exac­er­bat­ed, lead­ing to feel­ings of guilt and despair over his sister’s dis­ap­pear­ance.

The search yields no results, and the sense of loss deep­ens with­in the fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in their moth­er, who phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly with­draws from the fam­i­ly unit. Joe reflects sor­row­ful­ly on their col­lec­tive grief, feel­ing that he would have been a more replace­able child. Ulti­mate­ly, this chap­ter sets up a pro­found explo­ration of fam­i­ly, loss, and iden­ti­ty against a back­drop of cul­tur­al dis­lo­ca­tion and hard­ship.