Every summer a Native American family travels from Nova Scotia to Maine where the adults are employed picking blueberries. The summer of 1962 is different. It is the year that their youngest child, Ruthie, disappears. The last person to see her is her brother Joe, and Joe spends the rest of his life feeling guilty that he was somehow responsible for her disappearance. In Maine, Norma lives a good life although her mother is fragile and overprotective of her. Yet Norma always feels that something is amiss in her life, but she can’t figure out what it is. Joe and Norma each narrate alternating chapters, so the reader sees life through their eyes.

I think the premise of The Berry Pickers is fine, but the characters are not complex and the ending is predictable.