It seems like every July/August I am in the mood for a book that is so beautiful and emotional that I cry. Last summer it was Tom Lake; this summer, it was The Berry Pickers.
The Berry Pickers Publisher Summary:
“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.”
My thoughts:
This book made me cry. A lot. I don’t know if it will make others have the same emotional response that I did however, as some of my emotions were triggered by my own past and trauma. I am just going to say though, it will probably make you cry some. I posted this on my Instagram and someone commented that they read it in the laundromat and just sobbed while reading. I felt that comment.
The story follows the story of a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia, who spend their summers every year picking blueberries in the same area of Maine. This has been the way it is for years. They are known, they are expected. Yet when one of their own goes missing, not much is done. (surprise surprise) The Mi’kmaq community who is in Maine for the harvest searches secretly while giving the appearance of working, although of course their focus is on finding little Ruthie, not necessarily how many berries end up in their baskets. At the end of the season though, the family must return to Nova Scotia, leaving the mystery of what happened to Ruthie, their daughter, their sister, behind.
The rest of the book is told from the perspectives of two characters, Joe and Norma. Joe was the last one to see his little sister Ruthie before she disappeared, and the guilt of this weighs on him his entire life. We hear from his point of view what the next fifty years were like for him, living in this shadow his entire life – in addition to what also happens to him those next fifty years. Through it all he always has his family though, and the love of his mother, who never ever gave up on thinking her daughter Ruthie was alive.
Norma on the other hand, grows up in a home of privilege, the daughter of a judge. She has been suffocated by her mother’s love which is strangling and oppressive and not healthy, and her mother’s overprotectiveness. Her father is more distant, but she has her aunt June who is the breath of life for her. Supportive and loving, she is there to help and guide and just be there for Norma when she needs it, her whole life. She tries to help Norma understand her mother some but really helps fill in those cracks. Norma has these memories though that don’t make sense, and the sense of unease, or of something missing, never leaves her.
While there is the underlying mystery and the fallout, the idea of love and family in all of its forms is such a huge theme in this book. The love of siblings, of two very different mothers who desperately want to hold on to their daughters yet in two very different ways and under different circumstances – one the physical, the other the memory. It shows the goodness of love and how it can be just joyous and free and supportive and all the things that love is, and also the darkness that some love can bring.
It is a very wonderfully written amazing story, from start to finish. It left me exhausted but so glad that I read it. It was just one of those books that I will never forget.
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 