The Berry Pick­ers by Aman­da Peters In this poignant and beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten debut nov­el, Aman­da Peters tells the sto­ry of a Mi’kmaq fam­i­ly whose lives are for­ev­er changed by the dis­ap­pear­ance of their youngest daugh­ter.

Set in 1962, the nov­el begins when a Mi’kmaq fam­i­ly from Nova Sco­tia trav­els to Maine each sum­mer to pick berries. Dur­ing one such trip, their four-year-old daugh­ter, Ruthie, van­ish­es with­out a trace. The loss dev­as­tates the fam­i­ly and rever­ber­ates through gen­er­a­tions.

Mean­while, a girl named Nor­ma grows up in a white, mid­dle-class fam­i­ly, haunt­ed by a feel­ing that some­thing about her life doesn’t quite add up. As Nor­ma search­es for her true iden­ti­ty, the nar­ra­tive weaves between her sto­ry and that of Joe, Ruthie’s broth­er, who has nev­er stopped look­ing for his sis­ter.

The Berry Pick­ers is a pow­er­ful explo­ration of fam­i­ly, iden­ti­ty, loss, and the long shad­ow of colo­nial­ism. It’s a deeply emo­tion­al and sus­pense­ful nov­el that asks what it means to belong—and what it takes to heal.