One family’s deepest pain. Another family’s darkest secret.

On a hot day in 1960s Maine, six-year-old Joe watches his little sister Ruthie, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of the blueberry fields, while their family, Mi’kmaq people from Nova Scotia, pick fruit. That afternoon, Ruthie vanishes without a trace. As the last person to see her, Joe will be forever haunted by grief, guilt, and the agony of imagining how his life could have been.

In an affluent suburb nearby, Norma is growing up as the only child of unhappy parents. She is smart, precocious, and bursting with questions she isn’t allowed to ask – questions about her missing baby photos; questions about her dark skin; questions about the strange, vivid dreams of campfires and warm embraces that return night after night. Norma senses there are things her parents aren’t telling her, but it will take decades to unravel the secrets they have kept buried since she was a little girl.

The Berry Pickers is an exquisitely moving story of unrelenting hope, unwavering love, and the power of family – even in the face of grief and betrayal.

A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

A powerful, devastating novel about family, belonging, and the agony of imagining the life you should have had, sparked by the disappearance of a four year old Mi'kmaq girl from the blueberry fields of Maine.One family's darkest secret. Another family's deepest pain.On a hot summer's day in 1960s Maine, six-year-old Joe watches his little sister Ruthie, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of the blueberry fields. Their family, Mi'kmaq people from Nova Scotia, are spending the summer there, picking fruit. Later that day, Ruthie vanishes without a trace. Joe was the last person to see her. For decades, he is haunted by grief, by guilt, and by the agony of imagining how his life could have been.In an affluent, suburban town nearby, Norma is growing up as the only child of unhappy, emotionally distant parents. Norma is smart, precocious, and bursting with questions she isn't allowed to ask. Why are there no photos of her as a baby? Why is her skin so much darker than her white parents? And what is she to make of the strange, vivid dreams of campfires and warm embraces that return night after night?Norma is bright enough to realise that there are things her parents aren't telling her. But the truth is far worse than she could have imagined. Because for Norma to understand who she really is, she will also have to confront the people who raised her, the terrible things they are capable of, and the secrets they have kept buried since she was a little girl.