The Berry Pickers

A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears in Maine's blueberry fields, setting off a terrible mystery that consumes the survivors, tears apart a community, and takes over fifty years to solve.

July of 1962. A Mi'kmaq family travels to Maine in order to gather blueberries for the summer from Nova Scotia. A few weeks later, Ruthie, the family's youngest child, disappears. She is four years old. Joe, her six-year-old brother, last spots her sitting on a favored rock near the edge of a berry patch. For years to come, Joe will continue to be devastated by his sister's abduction.

A little child named Norma grows up in Maine as the lone child of a wealthy family. Her mother is annoyingly overly protective, while her father is emotionally distant. Recurring dreams and visions that bother Norma frequently are ones that resemble memories rather than fantasies. Norma gradually learns as she gets older that there is something her parents aren't telling her. She will spend decades attempting to discover this family secret because she is unable to give up on her intuition.

This stunning debut by a brilliant new voice in literature is a captivating story about the pursuit of truth, the shadow of trauma, and the enduring power of love that will captivate readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light.