The Berry Pickers

A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

"Peters skillfully manages to hold the reader’s attention from the first page to the last . . . The Berry Pickers isn’t a mystery, it’s a truth telling by characters you can reach out and touch—characters whose misfortunes, regrets, feelings, and redemption most readers will relate to."

—Diane Lechleitner, New York Journal of Books

"A sensitive and devastating saga of families broken, children stolen, and fierce reckonings with the traumas of history . . . [Its] emotional climax will leave most readers with at least a tear in the eye."

—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads

"Peters beautifully explores loss, grief, hope, and the invisible tether that keeps families intact even when they are ripped apart. A poignant debut from a writer to watch."

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Peters' debut combines narrative skill and a poignant story for a wonderful novel to which many readers will gravitate . . . Indigenous stories like this matter."

—Booklist

"Enthralling . . . Powerfully rendered . . . [A] cogent and heartfelt look at the ineffable pull of family ties."

—Publishers Weekly