The Berry Pickers

By: Amanda Peters

Narrated by: Aaliya Warbus, Jordan Waunch

Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a family, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years

July 1962. Following in the tradition of Indigenous workers from Nova Scotia, a Mi’kmaq family 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 fans 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.

©2023 Amanda Peters (P)2023 HarperCollinsPublishers

Good story. Annoying narrator

The female narrator mispronounces so many words that it’s distracting. “Miss Happen” for mishapen; “Brown_stone” for brownstone; “cotton candy-dress” for cotton-candy dress. Ugh!!

Terrible reading of good book

The premise of this story, characters, and plot were well done. The male reader mispronounced local place names and gave characters southern accents rather than northern ones. The female reader did better with pronunciation but also messed up regional accents. Hard to get lost in the story with such glaring errors in the book itself narration. Disappointed.

Amazing. Not my typical book. 

I started reading this book for a bookclub, and within the first few chapters, I could not put it down. I finished the whole thing in one day. Amazing writing. The way it captures the emotions and situations of the story is just dumbfounding and captivsting. Like every good book… You can play it out like a movie in your head. Highly recommend. 

Moving Story

What a beautiful and moving story of loss but also of love. Couldn’t put it down.

Emotion evoking

Perhaps the greatest wordplay of describing heartache and sadness
This writer works in the same realm as Harper Lee and other great writers.

Sincere and sad

It has a good story but is at times painful and very sad. Good ending. Story held my attention.

Great Read

This audio book kept me engaged from two perspectives and also did a beautiful job capturing emotion. Worth the time to read or listen to!

Really nice story and great writing

Great story to listen to and the performance was excellent. The writing was beautiful. Worth the read.

Just average

It was an interesting story and well read, but not as compelling as has been described. The plot was pre-ordained with no real tension and bonding to the characters. 

Complex and interesting story

The story line is complex and weaves in and out of cultural, emotional and societal differences that affect the Native Americans and “white” people. The story touches on anger, grief and how people handle those emotions in positive and negative ways. All through the tale is woven a thread of acceptance and compassion.