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May 2025 Book Club - The Berry Pickers

Karen

Karen

Wiggle it, just a little bit!
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Yippee! The votes are in and we have a new batch of books to read together. :circles

The book for May 2025 is The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters. Feel free to read our book club books in any order that you choose and when you've finished reading, come back here and tell us what you think. Please label spoilers. We have a new trick for hiding spoilers. Type whatever you want and then highlight the spoiler portion and click the + button above and select Spoiler. If that doesn't work (seems to be funky on Macs) just highlight your text and change the color to white >>>This is a super secret spoiler alert!<<< like I did right there.​

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Just a note, anyone is welcome to join in with our book club reading at any time and join in the discussion! The more the merrier! :agree Happy reading!​
 
I read this one last year. I loved it. It sucked me in and I was rooting so hard for this family to get back together...

My heart broke for this family losing their child while they were all out working. And the 6 year old brother carrying the guilt basically his whole life that he wasn't watching his sister. The part where they were at the parade and the brothers saw her - I thought that would be it. So close!
 
Oooof, this has been on my TBR for a long time. I'm reading The Last Of The Moon Girls, then have my bookclub book to read... then this one!
 
I finished this a couple of weeks ago and as usual, I forgot to come back here and post my thoughts. Whoops! :giggle

This was a little slow for me, but I did like it. I'm going to put most of my thoughts into a spoiler below just in case. :)

I thought it was interesting that you basically knew right up front that Norma was Ruthie even though she didn't seem to know that until much later in life. I assumed that the story would revolve around trying to find Ruthie and we wouldn't know who she was until the family found her, so I thought that was unique for a plot. It also made it very interesting when we ended up seeing Ben at that protest and her Aunt seemed to scoot her away which revealed that she must have known that she was a stolen child too.

Joe's life was hard and man did he harbor so much anger because he blamed himself for being the last one to see her before she disappeared. Would he always have grown up with his temper, or was that truly because of the loss of his sister? I couldn't believe he stayed away even after he found out he had a daughter, but I'm glad that he seemed to find his way back to her also before he died.

I was confused when they referred to the family as Indian. I thought at first that meant from India for some reason, but later understood that meant they were native Indians. They referred to the family as Mi’kmaq which I didn't know what that meant either and had to look it up. I should have done that before I finished the whole book. Lol

I loved that Norma/Ruthie did find her way back to her family, but was sad that she didn't get to see her Dad before he died. I also can't imagine how Norma's mother dealt with the stress of being found out and how her Dad as a judge could allow her to keep a stolen child. He didn't seem to be as bothered by any of it either which was so weird! Let's just move a couple towns over and nobody will know anything. Yikes!
 
I had 3 different book groups reading this book. The last one will be discussing it in June. Luckily it was a very memorable story so I won't have to re-read it for the last one.

I found it a very interesting read and one that definitely hits your emotions. I found it very hard to believe that the judge husband just went along with the wife's kidnapping of Norma/Ruthie. No wonder the family dynamics for "Norma" were so bizarre with the secrets being concealed. I also felt so bad for Joe and how his guilt over Ruthie's disappearance affected his life. I was happy that he finally came home to his family and had a relationship with his daughter as well as made peace with his wife. The scene with the daughter and Ruthie taking Joe's ashes to bury at his cabin was so emotional.

Coincidentally, I had a somewhat recent issue of Smithsonian magazine that featured an article about the Mikmaq berry pickers.
 
bonnenuit said:
I had 3 different book groups reading this book. The last one will be discussing it in June. Luckily it was a very memorable story so I won't have to re-read it for the last one.

I found it a very interesting read and one that definitely hits your emotions. I found it very hard to believe that the judge husband just went along with the wife's kidnapping of Norma/Ruthie. No wonder the family dynamics for "Norma" were so bizarre with the secrets being concealed. I also felt so bad for Joe and how his guilt over Ruthie's disappearance affected his life. I was happy that he finally came home to his family and had a relationship with his daughter as well as made peace with his wife. The scene with the daughter and Ruthie taking Joe's ashes to bury at his cabin was so emotional.

Coincidentally, I had a somewhat recent issue of Smithsonian magazine that featured an article about the Mikmaq berry pickers.
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I have a small group of friends that we do book club in the summer months only because they are all teachers and don't read much during the school year. I tried to get them to read this book last summer and two of them quit just a few pages in because it dealt with a stolen child and they both have small little girls and it was too touchy of a subject for them I guess.

That's cool that you saw an article about the mikmaq berry pickers too.
 
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