Amanda Peters on The Berry Pickers and its flawed characters
The Canadian writer talks to Q's Tom Power about her acclaimed debut novel
Every year, the province of Nova Scotia sends a giant Christmas tree to Boston. It's a tradition that started in gratitude for the life-saving support Boston Red Cross and the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee provided after the 1917 Halifax explosion. It also speaks to a long and unique relationship between the Maritimes and New England.
That connection is the backdrop to Amanda Peters's debut novel, The Berry Pickers, which tells the story of a Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia who travels to Maine to work in the blueberry fields every summer. But on one such trip in the early '60s, the youngest daughter, four-year-old Ruthie, goes missing.
The story is told from two perspectives: Ruthie's six-year-old brother Joe, who was the last to see his sister and racked with guilt about it for years to come, and a young girl named Norma from Maine who's haunted by vivid memories that everyone tells her are dreams.
The Berry Pickers has had great reviews in The New York Times and The Washington Post. It recently won the 2023 Barnes and Noble Discover Prize for best debut novel and is on the shortlist for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Peters is a member of the Glooscap First Nation and is an associate professor at Acadia University. She joins Q's Tom Power to talk about The Berry Pickers, the complexity of writing about trauma, and how being a storyteller has helped her find a stronger sense of community.
The full interview with Amanda Peters is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Amanda Peters produced by Matt Murphy.