The Berry Pickers is an insightful and poignant novel that explores the impact of a kidnapping on the victim and the brother who last saw her.
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I listened to The Berry Pickers as part of the 2025 Thoughtful Reading Challenge. In honor of Thanksgiving, November’s challenge was to read a book written by a native American.
Let’s start with a quick summary of The Berry Pickers.
In the summer of 1962, a Mi’kmaq family heads down from Nova Scotia to the blueberry fields of Maine—something many Indigenous families did every year. But what should have been a simple seasonal trip turns devastating when four-year-old Ruthie disappears. One moment she’s perched on her favorite rock at the edge of the field, seen by her six-year-old brother Joe… and then she’s just gone. The mystery of what happened to her lingers for nearly fifty years, leaving Joe haunted and the family forever changed.
Not far away, another little girl—Norma—grows up in a well-off Maine household. Her dad keeps her at arm’s length, her mom hovers a little too much, and Norma can’t shake the strange dreams and flashes of memory that never quite make sense. As she gets older, she realizes her parents are hiding something big. And she’s not the type to let a mystery go. Her search for answers becomes a lifelong quest.
The kidnapping left Joe broken, and the guilt he feels is further compounded later when he helplessly watches his brother brutally beaten to death. The family never comes back to Maine after the murder, and they are never the same, especially Joe.
The story follows Joe at various stages of his adult life. He continues to do manual labor, gets divorced after beating his wife, fathers a child he doesn’t know, and, as an old man, lies in bed dying of cancer. He spends his time wandering around looking for answers and salvation, but finds little of either until his final days.
Meanwhile, Norma/Ruthie lives a very different life than her biological family. Though she’s well cared for, she never forms a strong bond with her father (probably because his crazy wife kidnapped her), and her unstable mother is overly protective. Young Norma has realistic dreams about playing around a campfire, wonders why she’s so much browner than the rest of her family, and has an imaginary friend named Ruthie.
As Norma grows up, she graduates from college, gets married, divorces after a devastating late-term miscarriage, and retires in her mid-fifties from a long teaching career. Upon her mother’s death, her aunt finally reveals the terrible secret she’s been keeping for nearly fifty years. Norma suspected she had been adopted but is shocked to learn that she had been kidnapped.
She and her aunt track her family down and they have a joyful and tearful reunion. And Joe finally finds some peace.
The Berry Pickers is a skilled exploration of a very heart-wrenching subject. The act of one unstable woman fundamentally altered the paths of so many lives, and I found myself wondering how different Joe’s life might have been if it hadn’t been burdened by such heavy guilt. And what about Norma/Ruthie? Her real family may have had limited financial means, but they had plenty of love to give. She probably would have had a much closer and healthier relationship with both of her parents, and the three siblings would have given her a wider support structure. I think that would have made a powerful difference in her life.
It was difficult to believe that Norma’s aunt and father wouldn’t have done the right thing by returning her to her real family. There were no shades of gray in her kidnapping. It was just flat out wrong, regardless of the weak rationalizations her kidnapper put forth.
This is probably my deficiency, but I wish there had been a little more action in the storyline. At times, it seemed to move along a bit slowly.
Regardless of my nitpicking, I liked The Berry Pickers, especially the uplifting ending. I think readers who enjoy literature about people’s lives and the impact of extraordinary events on ordinary people will be glad they read The Berry Pickers.
What about you? Did you read a book by a native American author in November? Please share!
The 2026 Thoughtful Reading Challenge will be posted in the next week or so. Hope you’ll join us!
Book Thoughts from Bed 
Thanks for the review! Love that cover, too!
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Me, too!
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Well done Michelle! Great review. I too really liked this book. It was a great story of obsession and the adverse impacts it had upon all of the characters of the book. Yes, it wasn’t a fast moving book but the storyline was compelling enough for me and the main characters (Norma/Ruthie and Joe) we so likeable that it didn’t seem to bog down. It was easy to root for Norma/Ruthie to discover the truth and so frustrating and horrifying how her mother kept the truth from her. Also, it was not hard to feel sympathetic to Joe and his guilt was palpable. They were two broken characters who were damaged by the kidnapping yet, their redemption made for a really good story.
Okay, if I’m going to nitpick, is it just impossible to publish a book these days where the characters have faith and believe in God? There must have been 6 or 7 times where characters in the book had to state, “I’m not a believer” or something to that effect. I’m pretty sure that a little faith in God might have made their situation a little better. Then of course, the author had to bash the Church. When Ruthie goes to mass with her mother, she says something along the lines that the Church “smelled of old bread and stale grape juice.” Wrongo dongo. We don’t bake bread in the Church and we have wine, not grape juice. Sounds like the author has some sour grapes that she needs to work through. Again, a small thing but it just seems to be so prevalent in so many books these days. Still, I would highly recommend this book.
Hey, what a fun year of reading with you! I look forward to next year and your Thoughtful Reading Challenge! Merry Christmas!
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Wow, this sounds like a great book – I’ve put it on my short list! I am currently reading a book by one of my favorite indigenous authors, Louise Erdrich, of the Ojibwe people. She has written a lot of great books, and this one, The Sentence, has some great twists and turns. It is a literary ghost story set at the Birch Bark Bookstore, which is a real bookstore that Erdrich owns and runs in Minneapolis (I have been there – it’s great!). In a fun trick, the fictional protagonist meets “Louise” who hires her to work in the bookstore. What’s really neat is that Louise Erdrich narrates the audiobook, so I’m listening to Louise talk about a fictional character describing herself. It’s very clever. On top of that, the characters are great, and the ghost story is oddly plausible. I’m listening as fast as I can, and hope to finish soon!
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