St. Paul’s Book Club

You’re invited to join St. Paul’s Book Club. We meet virtually via Zoom on the second and *fourth Tuesday at 6:30 pm , and we read one book a month from a variety of different genres. You don’t need to join in for every book discussion; we have people who come because they are interested in a particular book. You can also join the discussion for only the fourth Tuesday when we all have finished the book if that fits better in your schedule. The group is welcoming and lively, and we all enjoy the difference in age, interest, and experiences. For more information please contact Donna Dick.

May 14 & 28 – The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years

“A stunning debut about love, race, brutality, and the balm of forgiveness.” —People, A Best New Book

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.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

“A harrowing tale of Indigenous family separation . . . [Peters] excels in writing characters for whom we can’t help rooting . . . With The Berry Pickers, Peters takes on the monumental task of giving witness to people who suffered through racist attempts of erasure like her Mi’kmawancestors.” —The New York Times Book Review