Book Review: The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters – an emotional read about identity, guilt and the effects of childhood trauma

Amanda Peters won a cluster of awards, including a Carnegie Medal, for this novel. I’d also heard many recommendations from other readers, so have had this on my to-read list for some time. The Berry Pickers explores what happens when a young Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the berry fields where her family are working. They are a family of five children, who with their parents travel from Nova Scotia to Maine every year to work in the berry fields to supplement their income.

Every year, they set up camp with other families, and there’s a strong sense of community as the pickers get to work. It’s the early 1960s when six-year-old Joe loses sight of his four-year-old sister Ruthie to look at something for a moment. When he returns, she is gone. An extensive search over the days and weeks that follow yields no clues while the police are reluctant to get involved; there’s even a suggestion that the family were careless. You can’t help feeling they would have been far more helpful for a local family, or a white family.

Joe grows up with this tragedy on his conscience, as well as the loss of his older brother Charlie in a fairground altercation. This sets in place a rage that will affect him for much of his life. When we meet him at the start of the book, Joe is dying of cancer. Now in his fifties, he still does not know what happened to his little sister. Is it too late now for him to find out?

The narrative flips between Joe’s story and that of Norma, a young girl growing up in a middle-class white home. Norma is disturbed by strange dreams and questions about why she is so much darker-skinned than her parents. Her mother, Lenore, is very loving, but over protective and watchful, not letting Norma out to play except in the back garden, hidden from view. It’s a strange, suffocating childhood, which has long-reaching effects on Norma and her adult life.

On the days after my dreams, I wasn’t permitted to be alone. So, I sat on the floor in the living room, bending my head and straining to hear them. I sat where I could best see them, and when Mother spied me, she lowered her voice. I had a stack of junior readers and my baby doll in front of me. I was nine. I was too old for the baby doll, but Mother felt better when I had it with me. When she watched me, I cradled it, dressed it and undressed it, and pretended to feed it. I combed its yellow nylon hair and bended and moulded it into braids. Then I whispered motherly things into its tiny plastic ears. But when Mother wasn’t looking, I set it aside and searched for books, a puzzle or anything more interesting for a girl of nine. When I didn’t have the doll, Mother would always find it, sit it beside me and watch until I picked it up and cradled it.

The plot follows the two main characters through the years – Joe trying to deal with his rage and Norma still questioning her identity, but unable to talk to her emotionally fragile mother about it. Both stories are immensely sad and this makes for quite an emotional read. There’s also the racism constantly directed at Joe and his family, particularly in the years following the loss of Ruthie and Charlie. The authorities are swift to criticise but offer no justice.

Which isn’t to say that the book is didactic or preachy. The storytelling through its two main characters brings the reader into their worlds, raising ideas about culture, motherhood, childhood trauma as well as grief and forgiveness, simply but effectively. It’s a terrific read, powerful and gripping. A four-star-and-a-half-star read from me.