“Hope is such a wonderful thing until it isn’t.”
Rachel and I were in the same zip code for a few short hours last week. We’re both pretty spent. But even a few short hours with Rae is a shot in the arm. Oh, how I hope we live in the same post code someday. (I’d settle for a neighboring one and call it a big win.) Hope is always a wonderful thing. You can tell Amanda Peters I said that. I’m not trash talking Peters—she won my admiration with her novel The Berry Pickers. I mean, how many debut writers win the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and shortlist for Canada’s Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize? Not many.
I loved The Berry Pickers. Mi’kmaq is a word I’d never heard before—now I associate it with a four-year-old girl named Ruthie. Each summer, Ruthie’s family rhythmically travelled from Nova Scotia to Maine, harvesting berries to make ends meet. When Ruthie vanishes from the blueberry fields, heartache prevails (especially for Joe who saw his younger sister last). Her whereabouts remain a mystery for decades. Painful decades. I really enjoyed this stirring novel told from the two siblings’ point of view. I’m with the reviewer who said, "Peters skillfully manages to hold the reader’s attention from the first page to the last . . . The Berry Pickers isn’t a mystery, it’s a truth telling by characters you can reach out and touch—characters whose misfortunes, regrets, feelings, and redemption most readers will relate to." Kudos to you, Amanda Peters.