SSF Monthly Book Club - The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

About the book

The Berry Pickers is a heartbreaking, stunning tale of Indigenous family separation. We follow a Mi’kmaq family as they navigate life after their four-year-old girl goes missing in the blueberry fields of Maine. The book is told through two alternating POVs. The first is a youngest son named Joe from Nova Scotia whose family traveled to Maine every summer to harvest blueberries. The second POV is a young girl named Norma who grows up in Maine with an overbearing mother and an emotionally distant father.

Amanda Peters gently and tenderly invites the reader to examine the effects of intergenerational trauma, racist residential institutions, and the specific ways Indigenous families were treated—in a deeply personal way.

About the author

Of mixed European and Mi'kmaq heritage, Amanda Peters was born and raised in the Annapolis Valley region of Nova Scotia as a member of the Glooscap First Nation. She was nominated for an Indigenous Voices Award in the Unpublished English Prose category in 2019 for her short story "Pejipug (Winter Arrives)", and won in the same category in 2021 for "Waiting for the Long Night Moon". Peters is a Canadian writer from Falmouth, Nova Scotia, whose debut novel The Berry Pickers was the winner of the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, 2024 Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence, and 2024 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.

 

When

Location

2nd Floor, Community Room

Library | Parks & Recreation Center, 901 Civic Campus Way, 94080, View Map