59. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

listened on Audible

307 pgs.

2023
Adult Mystery
Finished 6/26/24
Goodreads rating: 4.13
My rating: 4
Setting: Rural Maine (Rt. 9 north of Bangor) and Nova Scotia

My comments: Two voices, 1960 and perhaps 2000?  A four-year-old Micmac girl is kidnapped by a woman who has had many miscarriages and of course is slightly off.  The family of the little girl, Ruthie, (both parents, two brothers and a sister) never get over the feeling that she is still alive.  She is raised by the kidnapper and her husband as their own child, the mother being an odd woman who's super afraid that something is going to happen to now-Norma.  The story keeps switching back-and-forth between Ruthie/Norma and Joe, her two year older brother, who blames himself for her disappearance and has had an unhappy life because of the guilt he feels.  He's a good person, they are a good family, but it takes them almost five decades to reunite.  Such a sad story, but a really good one, too...

Goodreads synopsis:  A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains 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.