The Berry Pickers Unabridged

A Novel

By Amanda Peters

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

WINNER 2023 BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER PRIZE

WINNER of the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL for EXCELLENCE in FICTION

WINNER Best First Novel, Crime Writers of Canada Award

WINNER Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction

FINALIST Amazon First Novel Award

FINALIST for the Atwood-Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize

FINALIST Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Fiction

FINALIST Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award

FINALIST OLA Forest of Reading Evergreen Award

Longlisted for the First Nation Communities READ

A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that remains 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, is seen sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a field before mysteriously vanishing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, who was the last person to see Ruthie, is devastated by his sister’s disappearance, and her loss ripples through his life for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as an only child in an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, while her mother is overprotective of Norma, who is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem to be too real to be her imagination. As she grows older, Norma senses there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she pursues her family’s secret for decades.

A stunning debut novel, The Berry Pickers is a riveting story about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

ISBN: 9781443468213
Imprint: Harper Perennial
On Sale: Apr 4, 2023
List price: $29.99
Trim Size: 1.000 in (w) x 1.000 in (h) x 1.000 in (d)
BISAC 1: FICTION / Indigenous/General (see also Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island or AI/AN)
BISAC 2: FICTION / Family Life / General
BISAC 3: FICTION / Literary

Amanda Peters

Biography

AMANDA PETERS is a writer of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry. Her debut novel, The Berry Pickers, was a critically acclaimed bestseller in Canada. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review and Filling Station. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for unpublished prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers’ Trust Rising Stars Program. Peters has a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto, and she is a graduate of the master of fine arts program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Amanda Peters lives and writes in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, with her fur babies, Holly and Pook. 

Aaliya Warbus

Jordan Waunch

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

WINNER 2023 BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER PRIZE

WINNER of the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL for EXCELLENCE in FICTION

WINNER Best First Novel, Crime Writers of Canada Award

WINNER Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction

FINALIST Amazon First Novel Award

FINALIST for the Atwood-Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize

FINALIST Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Fiction

FINALIST Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award

FINALIST OLA Forest of Reading Evergreen Award

Longlisted for the First Nation Communities READ

A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that remains 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, is seen sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a field before mysteriously vanishing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, who was the last person to see Ruthie, is devastated by his sister’s disappearance, and her loss ripples through his life for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as an only child in an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, while her mother is overprotective of Norma, who is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem to be too real to be her imagination. As she grows older, Norma senses there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she pursues her family’s secret for decades.

A stunning debut novel, The Berry Pickers is a riveting story about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

ISBN: 9781443468213
Imprint: Harper Perennial
On Sale: Apr 4, 2023
List price: $29.99
Trim Size: 1.000 in (w) x 1.000 in (h) x 1.000 in (d)
BISAC 1: FICTION / Indigenous/General (see also Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island or AI/AN)
BISAC 2: FICTION / Family Life / General
BISAC 3: FICTION / Literary

Amanda Peters

Biography

AMANDA PETERS is a writer of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry. Her debut novel, The Berry Pickers, was a critically acclaimed bestseller in Canada. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review and Filling Station. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for unpublished prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers’ Trust Rising Stars Program. Peters has a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto, and she is a graduate of the master of fine arts program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Amanda Peters lives and writes in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, with her fur babies, Holly and Pook. 

Aaliya Warbus

Jordan Waunch