This review of The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters does contain some spoilers – however, this was novel was very character driven, and the reader is given a good idea of what is going to happen from the beginning of the story. This does not take away from overall reading experience in my opinion.
How much heartbreak can one family endure? A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia endures one heartbreak after another starting when their youngest, Ruthie goes missing from the berry field they are working one summer in 1962. We soon learn that Ruthie, now living as Norma has been taken by a white family, as the story progresses with the dual perspectives of Norma and Joe.
Joe was the last member of the family to see Ruthie, this becomes a part of the guilt he will carry with him for the rest of his life. Ruthie’s disappearance causes ripples of consequences for her and the family who never stop missing her, or believing that she is alive. Her mother holds on to a sock doll and a pair of tiny boots, along with the grief and belief that Ruthie is out there somewhere.
Joe and his family struggle between the need to believe that Ruthie is alive and the need for closure. “While I never believed that Ruthie was dead, wouldn’t it be better to know for sure. Wouldn’t mom be bale to throw those shoes away if she just knew that Ruthie was gone. “
We are first introduced to Joe when he is in his fifties and dying of a cancer that has spread throughout his body. In between recounting his life stories, he shares a wish with his remaining siblings, Ben and Mae, which is to see Ruthie again before he dies.
Not much is withheld from the reader from the get go. It is pretty clear that Norma is Ruthie, as she recounts her confusion and repressed memories from the early days in her new home. The consequences this held for Norma, in a family desperate to conceal their wrongdoings, were suffocating. Her mother allowed her grief, due to the inability to have her own children, to consume both her and Norma. With a mother who was constantly paranoid and overprotective of the daughter that didn’t belong to her, Norma recounts her claustrophobic upbringing in a strangers home. Norma is constantly wondering why she is darker than her parents and her aunt, why there are no pictures of her before the age of five and why she can’t talk about her “dreams” without her mother getting a headache.
It is impossible to feel sympathy for Norma’s “mother” Lenore, who took little Ruthie and held onto her fiercely, causing insurmountable pain to another mother and family who would spend the rest of their lives missing her. Through Norma’s story we are confronted by the injustice of a white family taking an indigenous child and raising them without any understanding of or access to their heritage and culture.
Shortly after Ruthie goes missing, the authorities who failed to help her family in their search, threaten to take the family’s remaining children away to residential schools, citing the family’s inability to hold on to their children. The entire incident is ablaze with injustice, as we are asked to confront the appalling reality that indigenous families faced throughout history and still face today.
We bear witness to the grieving family’s pain throughout the years through Joe’s point of view. We see him lose a brother, absorbing even more guilt, leading him to become lost and to find vices which begin to unravel his own life as he ages. Joe too is lost to his family for many years, after he makes a big mistake and flees Novia Scotia.
When he finally returns to his family, his time with them is cut short, due to his cancer diagnosis. Leaving his mother to face the impending loss of a third child.
Meanwhile, Norma is now in her fifties and facing the loss of the parents who raised her. Before her mother dies, the secret is revealed to Norma, allowing her to begin the search for her true family.
All the while, this story is one heartbreak after another and had me crying at multiple junctions, throughout the audiobook, which I was allowed early access to through Netgalley and thanks to RB Media.
Despite the heartbreak and tragedy experienced by Ruthie’s family and the claustrophobic confusion and misplacement experienced by Norma, The Berry Pickers still holds on to hope through out the entire novel. This is what kept me going throughout the more dismal moments. The hopeful promise of reunion and healing.
The bittersweet ending is where you’ll cry the most because it feels so perfectly satisfying, yet so incredibly unfair, all at once.
This is by no means a true mystery or a thriller, and some may find it lacking “action” or a bit slow to start off with, but I was fully invested in the unfolding of Joe and Ruthie’s stories. This was beautifully written and was a stunning debut for the author Amanda Peters who is of Mi’Kmaw and settler ancestry.
This is not only the story of Ruthie’s disappearance and the consequences that followed but an exploration of what it means to be Mi’kmaw and Indigenous. Throughout the novel, Joe questions whether being an Indian means there is something inherently wrong with him, stemming from the casual racism he and his family faced while he was growing up.
“The day Ruthie went missing, the blackflies seemed to be especially hungry. The white folks at the store where we got our supplies said that Indians made such good berry pickers because something sour in our blood kept the blackflies away. But even then, as a boy of six, I knew that wasn’t true. Blackflies don’t discriminate. But now, lying here almost fifty years to the day and getting eaten from the inside out by a disease I can’t even see, I’m not sure what’s true and what’s not anymore. Maybe we are sour.“
Norma, whose darker complexion was attributed to a mysterious Italian ancestor, by her parents wonders if there is something wrong with her for not inherently knowing that she was Native American before discovering her roots. It takes finding family for her to truly begin to understand who Ruthie is.
“You’ve been called Ruthie many times, you just can’t remember. But don’t worry, we remember for you.”
4/5 stars and a great Own Voices debut to read for Native American Heritage month.