This month we will be reading, "The Berry Pickers" by Amanda Peters.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER | 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner | Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
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.
"A harrowing tale of Indigenous family separation . . . [Peters] excels in writing characters for whom we can’t help rooting . . . With The Berry Pickers, Peters takes on the monumental task of giving witness to people who suffered through racist attempts of erasure like her Mi’kmaw ancestors." —The New York Times Book Review
How it Works?
Literary Book Club meets on the last Friday of the month at 11 am. We read both fiction and non-fiction. All are welcome to our discussions. Books will be available at the main desk in early December. We provide regular print, large print, and audio when it is available. If you would like an alternative format, please let us know and we’ll do our best to accommodate your request!
If you have questions or would like to be added to the Literary Book Club email list, contact Rebecca at renman@peterboroughnh.gov or call the Help Desk: 603-924-8040.
Peterborough Town Library, located downtown at the corner of Main and Concord/Rt 202, has a large meeting room, study rooms, classroom, and a board room available to the public.
