Amanda Peters

A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that will remain 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 mysteriously. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain deeply affected by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Boston, 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.

A stunning debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction, The Berry Pickers is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma and the persistence of love across time.

Reviews
“Amanda Peters manages to take you home to the East Coast in the very best ways – through family love and personal grief and the precious accounting of minutes and memories. You cannot help but love these characters from the first chapter. They stay with you long after the last page.” — Cherie Dimaline, bestselling author of The Marrow Thieves

“The Berry Pickers is an intimate story about the destruction wreaked on a family when their youngest child goes missing. Peters brilliantly crafts a multi-layered tale about how one irrational act creates irrevocable harm that ripples through multiple lives, including the lives of the perpetrators. This is an emotional novel that is beautifully rendered. An amazing read from a talented new voice.” — Michelle Good, bestselling author of Five Little Indians

“A marvelous debut. The Berry Pickers has all the passion of a first book but also the finely developed skill of a well-practiced storyteller. The Berry Pickers is a triumph.” — Katherena Vermette, bestselling author of The Break

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place—from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water.

In this intimate collection, Peters melds traditional storytelling with beautiful, spare prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he can no longer communicate with his own parents. A young woman finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. An old man remembers his life as he patiently waits for death. And a young girl nervously dances in her first Mawi’omi. The collection also includes the story “The Berry Pickers,” which inspired Peters’ critically acclaimed novel of the same name, as well as the Indigenous Voices Award–nominated story “Pejipug (Winter Arrives).”

At times sad, sometimes disturbing but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.

Educator Information
Waiting for the Long Night Moon is a collection of short stories.

Additional Information
256 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback