Amanda Peters has written a story that will grab your heart and not let go. The Berry Pickers is a tale about two families who negotiate the journey of grief in significantly different ways and the result is heartbreakingly poignant. 

The story opens with the disappearance of 4-year-old Ruthie, the youngest child in a Mi’kmaw family that has left Nova Scotia for their annual berry picking pilgrimage to Maine. Vanishing in the middle of the day, her distraught family searches endlessly to find her but sadly, to no avail.

The devastating impact that this event has on this family, especially the youngest son Joe, leaves a permanent and irrevocable fissure that no time can heal.

No spoiler alert required here as we are introduced early on to another family in Maine… Lenore, Frank and their 4-year-old daughter Norma who is beset by dreams of being in another place with another family. Lenore, a woman who has suffered multiple stillbirths, convinces Norma that these dreams aren’t real and that she is safe. Eventually, the dreams subside but Norma always has a sense that there is something about her life that isn’t quite right. While she grows up smothered by the love of parents and her Aunt June, her sense of unease does not ever go away.

This story follows the paths of these two seemingly unrelated families as they navigate their lives under the mantle of enormous grief and unbearable guilt. I realize that my description of The Berry Pickers makes it sound like a terribly depressing read but at the heart of it is a story of the restorative power of love and family.