Amanda Peters

Fiction 2023 | 302 pages

I found The Berry Pickers to be sad and rather boring.  There are two primary characters ... and their chapters are interspersed.  One fact that makes these characters interesting is that they are First Nation people, members of the Mi’kmaq tribe, though one of them does not know this.  Their homes are originally in Nova Scotia and when young, travel to Maine each summer to pick berries and earn a living.

Joe is dying and has held on for all his life to two tragedies that happened when he was a child, the kidnapping of his little sister Ruthie, and the beating death of his brother Charlie.  Joe is a sad, unredeemed man, who becomes violent and distant.

Norma is plagued by bad dreams and always has a sense that something is amiss in her family, where she is an only child of an overprotective mother and distant father, both actually decent parents.

By the third chapter in, you know the denouement.  This may sound like a spoiler, but it is quite obvious that Norma is actually the abducted little sister of Joe, Ruthie.

I found the characters rather shallow and cliche-ish, and I didn't much like either one.

But the sweet tenderness of the ending almost made it all worthwhile.

Suggested by KK.

February 2025