Family, loss and devastating secrets lie at the heart of the story Amanda Peters tells in her slow-burning debut novel, The Berry Pickers. In 1962, a Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq family travels to Maine, where they have gone for many years to spend the summer picking berries. That year there are five children, the youngest, Ruthie, just four years old. One day, Ruthie and six-year-old Joe go off together to eat their lunch. Joe, distracted by something, leaves his sister on her own, and Ruthie goes missing. Peters’ novel traces the effects of this traumatic loss on Ruthie’s family while also providing the reader with a window into Ruthie’s adult years and her search for her true identity. Peters splits the narrative into two alternating threads. In the first we find Joe, now in his fifties, at home with his family after many years of self-imposed exile, obsessing over past mistakes and failures. Joe is dying of cancer. The other thread follows a character named Norma, an only child raised by a husband and wife in a comfortable New England setting. Though over-protective and tight lipped about the past, her parents have been good to her, and Norma’s life has been happy. But as she grows older, unsettling questions arise that pique her curiosity and raise suspicions that all is not as it should be—questions such as why are there no photos of her as an infant, and why is her skin darker than her parents’—questions that her mother and father seem at a loss to answer. Peters follows her two main characters through their middle years and into later life. Joe, tormented by guilt over being the last family member to see Ruthie before her disappearance, and anguished over the death of older brother Charlie, resorts to booze and violence. One night, after getting drunk and striking his wife hard enough to draw blood, he leaves Nova Scotia and his family, first heading west, then returning to Maine, where for many years he works as a farm hand and manual laborer. Norma, living in New England, studies literature in college, gets a teaching job, marries, divorces. But down through the years, the mystery of Ruthie’s disappearance continues to eat away at Joe and his family, and at the same time Norma’s questions about her own origins deepen. In her first novel Amanda Peters is less concerned with sustaining a mystery than with depicting the emotional toll of profound loss and dark family secrets on the human psyche. The reader will see the resolution coming, but this takes nothing away from the experience of reading the book because Peters finds other ways to generate suspense and wraps up her story in a manner that is satisfying dramatically. This is a novel that unapologetically touches the heart, but it also raises urgent questions about identity and social justice. Moving and often gripping, The Berry Pickers is a triumph of empathetic storytelling. It also announces Amanda Peters as a writer to watch. ( )

The premise of this book will strike terror in the heart of every parent. In 1962, a 4-year-old Mi'kmaq Indian girl disappears without a trace in Maine. The family of seven from Nova Scotia is there picking blueberries to supplement a meager income. Despite every effort to find Ruthie, she is never found, leaving a heartbroken family riddled with guilt, grief and sorrow. Joe, her brother, holds himself responsible since he was the last one to see her.

The story is told from two perspectives - Norma, an only child with an emotionally distant father and a true helicopter mother and Joe, haunted by Ruthie's loss. Norma's recurrent dreams hold the key to her past while Joe leads an aimless, alcohol-fueled life away from his birth family.

I anticipated being more emotionally invested in this book than I was. The resolution fell flat for me because I never felt any connection with either Joe or Norma. It is a character-driven novel, which I usually enjoy, but it didn't work for me this time. ( )

Indian migrant girl stolen at 4 yrs old, raised as middle class white; deus ex machina finish….but, Good characters ( )

Decided this would be a DNF at 54% of the audi0book. The narrators are fine - they simply have almost nothing with which to work. The narrative is all tell and no show and even the telling lacks imagination and style. Given their backgrounds, the characters should be leaping off the page but they feel flat. Two stars for the author choosing indigenous people from Nova Scotia as her main characters but these characters deserve a better storyteller. ( )

In the summer of 1962, a Native American family travels from Nova Scotia to Maine to harvest blueberries. A few weeks later, Ruthie, the 4-year old daughter, disappears. She was left in the care of her 6-year old brother who last saw her sitting on a rock. Despite intensive searching, no sign of her could be found. Her disappearance haunts the family members for years, especially Joe, who is convinced that she is still alive somewhere, and older brother Ben, who, about 16 years later, believes that he saw her at a protest but could not get her attention. Ruthie's red boots sit on a closet shelf as a reminder of what was lost. The family faces hardship and tragedy due to their low status and ethnicity. As the story progresses, Joe is dying of cancer and tells most of the family's history in flashbacks. He is trying to make amends for the wrongs in he has committed and is still hopeful that Ruthie will be found before he dies.

This family's story alternates with that of another family, a local doctor, his wife, and their daughter Norma. Although the father is a doctor in high standing in the community, they aren't much happier. The mother is high strung, domineering and overprotective. Norma is rarely allowed out of the house except with family members. People often comment on Norma's complexion, which is darker than her parents', and she wonders why there are no baby pictures of herself in the family scrapbook. The family has a reason for everything: her complexion is due to some far-back Italian ancestors, and they were just too busy taking care of her (plus her mother's health was frail) to remember to take photos. The reader doesn't have to work very hard to figure out that Norma is really Ruthie, snatched by a woman who had suffered several miscarriages and whose mental health was in decline.

The rest of the novel plays out how the the truth behind Ruthie's disappearance and identity slowly comes to light. I actually enjoyed this book a lot more than the above description might suggest. The characters are well drawn and interesting, and the author writes beautifully about loss, grief, a sense of identity, and prejudice. There are a number of events that reveal how the loss of Ruthie has affected every member of the family, and Norma's family also suffers from the secret they must hide. ( )