“The Berry Pickers” by Amanda Peters

Everybody is talking about this book. 

That's exactly what the emailed newsletter from Strand in NYC said, so how could I not buy this book? I wanted to know what everyone was talking about. Plus it was almost my birthday, so why not give myself a little present?

When the book arrived, I loved the beautiful cover (it's one of those really soft-feeling ones, somehow like slick velvet) but I must admit that the synopsis did not draw me in. I started reading anyway, because whaddayagonna do, but it did not grab me. And then Sam gave me all those Miss Marple books! So The Berry Pickers was laid aside and I did not touch it for a couple of months. 

Last weekend I decided it was finally time to finish what I'd started. I was surprised to see I'd only made it to page 8 the first time around! I went ahead and started over at the beginning, because you know me and my memory. I didn't want to forget something important from those first few pages. And this time I got into it. Maybe around page 11? If only I had persevered the first time around. 

This is a split story: an indigenous family from Nova Scotia whose 4-year-old daughter goes missing in 1962, a girl named Norma growing up an only child in Maine, a middle-aged man named Joe dying of lung cancer, and the links between them all. The synopsis doesn't come right out and say this, but it's pretty obvious throughout the entire book so I don't feel like it's a terrible spoiler to say this: Norma is the daughter who went missing, and Joe is her older brother. But there is so much more to the story than that, and the characters are very vivid and real-seeming. 

My only complaint (other than finding the beginning a bit meh when I first tried to read it) was the last long chapter. Somehow it seemed superfluous. It wasn't too happy; it was more bittersweet, and that was fine. It just seemed to say too much when it could have been more effective to leave some things unsaid.