The Berry Pickers

De: Amanda Peters

Narrado por: Aaliya Warbus, Jordan Waunch

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

Absolutely Awful Narration

Aaliya Warbus’ portrayal of Norma/Ruthie does the story no justice. Her voice, pacing and mispronunciations ruined the character for me.
Longtime Listener

Great story telling

I really didn’t want this book to end. I could listen to “Joe’s” voice all day as I found it very soothing in his story telling as a young boy growing up with his family before the tragedies that changed him. Ruthie, her two lives, one always in the shadows. Definitely recommend this story!

made me cry twelve times, in a good way

overall I really enjoyed this story and found myself relating to the characters in small ways. It wasn't much of a mystery where the plot was going but the author did a great job describing grief in a myriad of ways and walked us to a satisfying ending. the narration was pretty good but not my favorite. For some reason the voices of the narrators occasionally distracted me from the story of that makes any sense?

Beautiful 😢

This was a beautiful but sad story! I won’t spill it for those who haven’t read it yet! The takeaway for me is that the decisions we make in life not only affects us but others as well, so we have to be mindful of the things we do and the way we treat people!

I had to stop listening

Wow. I saw the other review that the narrator was bad and while I didn’t like the first, I had no idea that it was the second narrator would cause me to need to turn it off entirely. Hated it that much. Disappointed because I was otherwise enjoying the story but now I wish I could get a refund.