This book is proof why summaries can’t relay the real story. With rotating chapters focusing on Joe and Norma/Ruthie, we can predict where we’re eventually headed. But it’s the small moments with all the heart.

An older, dying Joe tells his story in retrospect while Norma escorts us as she matures, eventually learning her identity as a White only-child Mainer has, in fact, always been that of the youngest in a large Mi’kmaq family of Nova Scotia.

When you have such complicated narratives as these, it’s the emotion the author imbues in her cast that makes the story. We encounter so many iterations of grief, anger, despair, fear, and acceptance that every reader will feel themselves in these characters.

If you choose to read The Berry Pickers, which I hope you do, prepare yourself for the last line of chapter 13. That’s where I broke