Poured Over: Amanda Peters on The Berry Pickers

By Jenna Seery / October 31, 2023 at 6:00 am

“There’s nothing truer than fiction, because you can always find yourself in the work.”

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters is the story of a Mi’kmaq girl who goes missing and the grief, turmoil and hope that they find as they move forward. Peters joins us to talk about her personal connections to the novel, crafting her characters, connection through storytelling and more with guest host, Jenna Seery.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Jenna Seery and mixed by Harry Liang.            

Featured Books (Episode):
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart
The Circle by Katherena Vermette
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga

Full Episode Transcript

Jenna Seery

I am Jenna Seery, a bookseller and associate producer of Poured Over and today, I am so excited to be joined by Amanda Peters, the author of The Berry Pickers. This novel is beautiful. That’s all I can say. It’s heartbreaking. It’s full of love. It’s full of connection and family. And the stories that we choose to tell and we get to tell about ourselves. There’s characters you’ll love, and some that you may not. But at the end, it all comes together in such an incredible way. So thank you so much for being with us today.

Amanda Peters

I’m so happy to be here. And I’m so glad to hear those words about my work.

So I always like to start with you introducing this book for us because there’s so much that happens to the characters in this novel. And I’d love to hear sort of your description of what goes on.

Like the elevator pitch, so to say, yeah, basically Mi’kmaq, who are an indigenous peoples from here in Nova Scotia where I live, they go to Maine each year to pick blueberries, which they might actually still do sometimes. And while they’re there in 1962, their youngest daughter, Ruthie goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine. And then the book follows the dual narrative of Joe, her brother, who was six when she went missing in the last person to see her. And it just it goes through his life as he deals with the repercussions of that event. And then Norma, a young girl raised in affluent white family in Maine, and goes through her life, and she never feels quite like she belongs.

I love that the intriguing sort of you maybe you don’t know, maybe you can know from just that. But there’s so much that unfolds in the way that the lives of these characters intertwine at so many different points. Yeah, it really is a beautifully woven story. But I wonder how you sort of took the path to writing this book and how it came to you both how you started writing and how you decided that this was the story you wanted to tell?

That’s such a funny question. Because I often say this is a book that I didn’t want to write. So the inspiration from the story is I myself am part Mi’kmaq, my dad is Mi’kmaq. Mom, my mom is not she’s Caucasian of settler descent. But my dad is and he when he found out I was writing, he kept saying you should write about us berry pickers, you should write about us berry pickers. When he was young his entire family went down to Maine to pick berries. And I said, Dad, I write fiction, I make things up. I don’t write nonfiction. And I don’t tell those stories. But he was very insistent. So him and I packed up the car, my Prius, in the summer of 2017. And he took me down to the berry fields, and he showed me where they lived. And he explained how it all worked. And he told so many great stories, and we just had a great time. And I recorded them. And we laughed. And yeah, it was a great time. And while I was there, the first line of the first chapter, kind of sprung to my head. And I just started writing from there, and it just kind of unspooled so they say.

Sometimes the books pick us, I think that we don’t always get to pick the book.

Yes, right. Yeah, exactly. I think this story was like itching to be told, and they picked me to tell it.

I think that that’s such an like an interesting way of looking at it, like the stories pick you I think you can really feel that in as a reader, when something really comes from the soul of the author, and is really connected to them in a way that is personal and real. You can tell from the way that you connect with these characters that it’s something bigger than just, Oh, I’d like to write about this now.

Yeah, it’s a whole different experience. I have a lot of experience presenting to people on work I’ve done in the past, and I’ve never gotten nervous or anxious. But for talking about this book, when it first came out was like, this is part of my soul. This is part of my heart. I poured my everything into this. So it was a little bit more awkward. But I’m slowly getting used to talking about the work.

And I think the work really stands on its own like it is so strong the way that these characters exist. I keep coming back to the characters because that is what I connected to first the voices that you’ve created. I mean, you have these two narrators that go back and forth. And yet each of their voices are so strong and so distinct. That as I was reading, you know it, it really felt like two people that I was in conversation with, which sometimes I think when you read multiple POV novels, it can seem like you hear the author’s voice going all the way through. But this I mean, Joe and Norma are two totally different people.

Well, that’s good, because I actually found that difficult. So when people tell me that I feel like I’ve succeeded because, well, the way I wrote it is kind of interesting because when I started it was just Joe’s story, there was no Norma, it was just Joe through his life. And there was this like niggling voice in the back of my head that was saying, I want to tell my story, I want to tell my story. So I started to write Norma’s story as well. But I found that I couldn’t write them both together, because I had this fear that they would just meld into one voice. And they wouldn’t be distinct when they’re two completely different people. So I wrote most of Joe’s first and then I wrote most of Norma’s. And then I put them together like a puzzle, so that I could just stay in Joe’s head for a long period of time, and just stay in Norma’s head for a long period of time. So I’m really happy that that actually worked.

I think it does. I mean, there are two complete narratives. But you know, spliced together in this way that it fits so well and you it really creates a propulsive novel. I mean, every time I was like, coming close to the end of one chapter, I’d be like, No, I just want to stay here. But then as soon as I got to that next page, I was like, just kidding. I want to know what’s gonna happen right now. And the way that it bounces back and forth in time is also very interesting. I was really intrigued as I started that, within each chapter as well, you go back and forth between time there’s a lot that’s in I guess, you would say the present for the novel, but then it sort of slips into these memories. And you the way you do it is not super delineated. They sort of just go back and all of a sudden, we’re in one of Joe’s memories, or one of Norma’s memories. And I found that really interesting that it’s not just now we’re here, and now we’re here, you sort of flow through?

Yeah, moving it around. And I don’t actually know how I did that.

I was gonna say, it’s really like, it seemed very natural. It didn’t seem like it was something that was super, like structured out, because it felt like it just kind of fit.

Yeah, and I think sometimes when you’re writing, some things are not intentional. They just happen the way they happen, because they’re meant to happen. I know that sounds like a flaky kind of answer. But yeah, if you’re sitting, it’s written in first person narrative, right? Because I wanted it to feel like it’s a conversation that they’re having with somebody, particularly the writer. So I wrote it that way, so that they would be talking in the present, but they could easily slip back to tell a memory. So if you sit down at the table with your parents or your grandparents, you’re at the table right now listening to his story that the telling from 40 years ago, I wanted it to feel like that. So I’m really glad that it came off that way. And it wasn’t really difficult to make that transition. Because sometimes when you’re reading, it can be a little difficult and get lost.

So I think especially with Joe, as we’re sort of learning about him, and there are moments where he is not someone that you maybe want to be close to or want to be in the head of because he has a lot of his ups and downs and being able to sort of understand that from his perspective and see it from the, you know, see the reactions to those around him, but still be in Joe’s voice the whole time and to understand how he felt about everything. It was really, I mean, it was a lot to go through. And I can imagine it was a lot to write some of those moments.

Yeah, he has some, there’s some intense moments in there. Sometimes you have to step aside for a little while after you write them. But we’re all flawed, right? All human beings are flawed. Maybe Joe is a little bit more flawed than most people. But he’s also a human being deserving of love and affection. There’s always that saying, people do bad things, and not necessarily bad people. So I think that really does apply to Joe. I actually had a mentor once say it was very brave to write a book of all despicable characters. I said, I don’t think they’re despicable. I think they’ve been through things. And I think they are showing their humanity, and maybe not in the most positive of ways. But yeah, I’m really glad that everybody can understand Joe and hopefully, maybe not sympathize with some of the things he’s done but understand him as a flawed human.

I think, especially when you understand his circumstances. And this applies to I think a lot of the characters, Norma’s mother, or Norma’s family in general as well, that under the circumstances that they are existing in, it makes sense where they’ve ended up especially, you know, if you go through socio economic, you know, and geographical restrictions, it makes sense how these characters have entered into the lives they have.

Yeah, I get a lot of people that tell me they hate Lenore, they just absolutely hate her. She’s a terrible person. And I said, but she was hurt. She was damaged. She was traumatized. And I’m not gonna say why because I don’t want to give any spoilers. But so we don’t justify what she does. But can you not see how she could justify it to herself, and how she could justify it to her husband and what she does so? So I don’t think she suspected, I think she’s hurt. And maybe she doesn’t go about trying to rectify her hurt quite the most appropriate way. But yeah, and I think all the characters to some extent, are like that.

And yet, you know, we have this wide net of characters we sit with these two, you know, main characters, but the entire cast that you’ve created, they really offset a lot of those really heavy, dark moments. Yeah, you have Joe’s sister May, who I love, because she just takes no nonsense from anyone. And it’s really, I think she’s the one really holding that family together.

Yeah, she is. I agree.

She is so like, with these men in her life, she’s like, You guys all got to get it together, because we got to take care of mom. And I love that.

Yeah. And it often happens that way, right? Women matriarchs, right, women take responsibility for the family. And that’s just the way it turns out. She also takes care of her brothers and, and everybody else around her so yeah, and she has, she does not take any bull from anybody.

Oh, she was every time you know, Joe would say something. Or, you know, and when the other brothers, Ben or Charlie, I was like, come on. You gotta get these boys together. And the same on Norma’s side with her aunt and Alice. Those characters were probably also some of my favorite too, you know, offset those moments where you’re like, I don’t understand how this this family is still working and still, you know, holding it together. And then you’re like, oh, because there are these other people involved?

Yeah. And they bring that that supportive and positive energy to the people who need it the most they think. And like, even though maybe Joe isn’t as close to May in some parts of the book. I think he knows internally that she’s always going to be there to tell him the truth and set him straight. And I think with Norma it’s the same, right. She always had someone in her house is kind of cold and disturbing, just slightly distant. But she always has her Aunt June, who she sits in the hallway in the closet talking to secretly, and it’s good to have those kind of relatives around you so that when the hard times do get hard, you can have someone there for you. So yeah, they’re my they’re kind of my favorites.

You know, I’m like I could read an entire book about and June, I think, because it seems like she’s really done some fun things, and maybe a whole book of her karaoke. We don’t know.

She is fun.

Just in general, the power of the storytelling in this novel is something that kept drawing me back in that these characters, for better or for worse are no matter what they’re going through. They still seek and need that ability to tell their own story and to have their story be heard. And I think that that parallels so well with a lot of what has been happening in indigenous fiction over the last few years, that push of like, not only just telling stories, but telling our own stories of being able to say this is not just an indigenous story, but this is a story of my culture, my people. And I think that people looking for books that really go into a specific time and a specific people will find so much in The Berry Pickers.

Yeah, I’m really pleased with that. Because both of these because we’re not a large group, the Mi’kmaq, I think there’s 15,000 of us total. So and I always find it a kind of an interesting fact that we went for migratory people went to the blueberry fields of Maine to pick berries. So yeah, it’s good that that’s getting some acknowledgement now, and it’s good that indigenous, I love indigenous literatures, because there’s so many tribes. I love that we’re telling our own stories, because in the past, stories were told about us and those were inaccurate, right, they were they are based on stereotype. They’re based on colonial perceptions of who we were. So it’s really important that people want to read about indigenous people in like a fantastical sense, like in the literary sense that they read indigenous writers, so I’m pretty pleased to be part of that, and especially for the meet my people the Mi’kmaq. It’s exciting.

I love the idea that we get these stories that are authentic and real, but they’re also normal. I mean, they’re not these, now we’re getting stories told by people. And it’s not just oh, this is the story of this. It’s just stories of regular people living lives that any other group of people gets told. And yet, now we’re finally getting these shades of every culture that we can really connect to. And obviously, there’s still an incredible amount of work to be done in representation in fiction and in all art, but just sort of have these stories now that are starting to come out is really exciting to get to get.

And I like this because like my family, my dad didn’t go to residential schools. I think you guys call them boarding schools down there. We call them the residential schools up here. So my dad didn’t go to a residential school. So he was raised off the reserve as well by his parents. So there is that whole area of indigenous life that wasn’t just on the reserve, you know what I mean in the residential school, there was always the kind of the threat of that loomed over it. But I just wanted to make sure that people knew that and we that everyday lives, we love we hate, we mess up. We were redemptive in ourselves like that, we have hope we have joy. So yeah, I just and we have loving, beautiful families. And I wanted to make sure that was put across. So there wasn’t these stereotypes in there, hopefully, that it’s a real human story.

I think the fact that there is so much laughter and love and joy in these stories, and even in the you know, that you create a novel around something that is serious and heavy and has a lot of weight, yet there is so much levity among the other characters. And it doesn’t feel like another narrative of oh, this is the hardships. It’s the whole picture the whole life of a group of people.

Yeah, and I think it’s important to notice those moments of joy and happiness. In indigenous cultures, a lot of times people heal with laughter, that’s where you go, even when we get uncomfortable. Sometimes we just laugh. So it’s a laughter and joy is very much part of the culture. And too many times, people like to put the trauma label on indigenous populations, so much so, which is true, there has been a lot of terrible things done to indigenous peoples in North America, in Turtle Island. But there’s also we are very resilient and joyful people too. So they need to be able to see both sides of that.

And I think fiction is such a great door for people who need and want more. I don’t think of reading ever as like a solitary experience. I don’t I don’t think of it as like a lonely thing to do. For me reading is like the ultimate act of connection. I love getting to see cultures and people that I would never encounter maybe in my own life, and to sort of be able to understand and see a slice into that. And I think for so many people, this is the easiest, and probably the most accessible way to understand cultures different than their own.

Oh, yeah, it is, I think. So there’s a lot of research out there that shows that people who read fiction are more empathetic as a group, right? Because you’ve been in the shoes of people who are completely unlike you. You’ve wandered through their lives, you’ve walked with them into terrible situations. I’ve been like, I’ve been to India in the 1930s, right? I’ve been to Britain, in the Jane Austen era, like I’ve been all these places, not actual physically, obviously, it’s just a human condition. Fiction is about the human condition. There’s nothing truer than fiction, because you can always find yourself in the work. And you can always explore others in the work. I just love it. I can see I’m getting a little bit excited about it. That’s how much I love that idea.

I agree. I mean, anytime I open a book, and I think, Okay, where am I going? Who am I going to meet? And it’s the best way to sort of understand something, I think, especially because we bring so much of ourselves to it as well. Yeah, when you think when you watch a movie or TV, everything is so laid out for you, you just kind of experience it, and it just sort of is there. But when you have to engage with something like with a novel or you know, short stories, you have to bring so much of yourself to it in order to really get something back.

Yeah, you do. And you have to create the world for yourself, right, I can only do so much. But you have to visualize the home, you have to visualize Route Nine, right? As I describe it, you have to visualize the berry fields, you have to visualize what these characters look like. So it brings you into it. And it helps you make the story your own. And I hope people are able to do that with this. And just exactly what you said, bring your perceptions into it, and mold a little bit of the story for yourself.

I can’t wait for people to start to get their hands on it. I love this setting that you’ve created. The world is really vibrant. And I think sometimes people overlook that in like literary fiction, I think they think oh, you know, world building or like creating setting is for fantasy or for other genre. But your world is so tactile and interactive. I could picture what these places look like, I could feel, I could picture the cabin, and everything that they experienced, which really helped me I put myself in those places a little bit more than just experiencing it. Even just watching it or something. I think really being able to create it in my mind.

That’s amazing. I’m pretty, pretty happy with that. Yeah, I think it’s like I wouldn’t have done such a great job of describing me if my dad hadn’t taken me down and show me the fields and show me like well this is how it was done. This is why these rocks are here like and that whole thing and I had all those pictures when I came back. So I found that really easy and of course the Annapolis Valley is where I’m from and where I live where I’m currently speaking to you from so it was kind of easy to write the Annapolis Valley and I was in Toronto doing a library tour and a friend of mine was from here lives there now came I was like did I do an okay job explaining the Annapolis style. And she said yes, but the funny story is I was writing this During COVID, so I couldn’t go to Boston, I wanted to go to Boston, because some of the books as like, takes place in Boston. So I wanted to wander around and see, but obviously, I couldn’t. So I have a friend who lives in Boston who was just on Messenger. And I had like, Google Maps up walking me through Boston. And I was like, this is cool. I’m getting a little bit with the Street View; I got a little bit of idea of what Boston would look like.

I love that. I love the sort of ways we set things up for ourselves. And, you know, having to especially over the last few years, really, a lot of people change their tactics for research and all that. But also, I imagine it was really fun to just get to go on an adventure with your dad. And to just like, create those memories along with sort of doing all that stuff.

It was great. I have to tell you this funny little thing. I had a Prius. And it’s so quiet that my dad would drive, and he’d leave it going and we he’d walk away from the car like that. Yep, turn it off. Yeah, it was fantastic. It was really good to hear him tell all these stories and reminisce and some of the little bits made it into the book. So

Especially I think, with cultures that have so much oral storytelling and have those things passed between people in between families, and you see that with Joe’s family a little bit they have sort of these stories about their and about, like all of these things that have happened and their culture in their community there. And to sort of have that put down in words for the rest of you know, the world who wants to sort of connect in that way is really great.

Yeah. And I like, for a lot of us, especially down here in southern Nova Scotia, a lot of the Mi’kmaq we don’t really have a strong connection to the cultural language, we’re starting to, we’re starting to reclaim it, which is really brilliant. But just the idea that two of the most important words, which are tea and potato to Mi’kmaq people, tea and potatoes. So yeah, it’s a good way to or even those of us who feel disconnected and are reclaiming our indigeneity. To see that on paper. I hope it inspires them to be like, Yeah, as long as we know the word for tea, we’re on the right track.

I think that there’s such a great I mean, language is such an important connection to culture. And I’ve even seen like things on Tik Tok and stuff of people of like indigenous creators, teaching their language and, and teaching words and things like that to not only people of their own culture who might be disconnected, but to just anyone who’s there to listen. Like it’s so fun.

Yeah, it’s very exciting. I know for me, my language here in Nova Scotia, we have a couple apps that you can do. And we’re a lot of us are just using the app to slowly learn a word a week kind of thing. And eventually, maybe we’ll be able to string sentences together. But yeah, it’s a good exercise.

I think just that desire now that so many people have to return to who they are, and to sort of understand who they are, especially in countries who maybe have really worked hard to strip those identities from their peoples. Yeah, that now is the time to sort of work through those things, whether through language learning, and through fiction, I think are great ways to introduce that.

And even through writing fiction, like I’ve always been kind of uncomfortable in my own skin as part Mi’kmaq, part settler. And I look very passing as we say, so I’ve always been a little bit uncomfortable in my skin that I didn’t speak the language. And I didn’t practice a culture. I wasn’t raised on the reserve other 10 minutes from it, but I wasn’t raised there. So writing this book actually brought me closer to who I am as a Mi’kmaq woman, and I really am grateful for the book itself. And for those characters to help me find myself a little bit more.

I mean, there’s so many of us are, that’s why people read and that’s why they write is to understand themselves in the world a little bit better.

Yeah, exactly. And there’s a little bit of me in these stories. So I won’t tell you where but there’s a little bit of me there.

I think the best books, fiction, nonfiction, whatever are the ones that have a little bit of the author inside.

When talking to authors. I think we all put a little bit there. It’s just sometimes it’s a little bit harder to suss out. But yeah, we put out a little bit of ourselves and everything we do.

Do you find yourself missing the characters in this world now that you’ve finished writing?

I’ve had people ask me that. And I say no, because their story is finished, to me. Their story has come to a conclusion. I’m not going to tell you what it is. Obviously, they don’t want any spoilers. But I did have people say what’s next for them? And I was like, I don’t know how well you can find what’s next for you and your interpretation of them. But for me, their story is over. And their story has been wrapped up. And they’re done. And I’m so happy that those characters are now no put to rest seems like the weirdest way to put it. But you know what I mean?

There’s a great resolution that comes with where these characters end up. And I think I mean, I’ve we’ve all read books where you get to the end, and you’re like, No, that that can’t be it. There has to be more but I think with The Berry Pickers, it’s a very like, okay, all right. Yeah, you know, it feels settled. It feels good. Oh, yeah. And I hope everyone’s doing well. I always say, I wish, I wish well to all these characters that I’m like, whatever comes next after the page, I hope it’s good for you. But yeah, I get why it was done where it is. But one of my favorite questions that I get to ask authors because I am always looking for the next thing is, what are some of your literary influences? And what were some of the things that have sort of built you to be the writer that you are or something that you’ve read recently? That’s really great.

Oh, that’s, I find it so difficult, because, obviously, like, I’ve read, like a lot of books, because I love books. So it’s really hard. But there’s a Canadian writer here in Canada named Jane Urquhart, who I absolutely love. And when I’m feeling like, I can’t write anymore, I shouldn’t be doing this. I just opened her book, The Underpainter, I just read a few pages. And I’m like, okay, I can get back to writing. But there’s a lot of ridiculously amazing indigenous writers, both in the US and in Canada. I studied at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So I get to meet a lot of these. So Kelly, Joe Ford and Brandon Hobson, and there’s just so many of them that and so many up and coming from our program, that that was exciting. And here in Canada, Katarina Vermette her new book, The circle just came out, which is obviously getting rave reviews. Michelle, good spybubble Indians, if you’re in Canada, that’s, that’s been on the bestseller list for three years now. I think. So there’s just so many amazing influences on me, you know what I mean? And I’m trying to like expand my own reading. So the Carol Shields award was helpful. I’m making my way through the shortlist for that. So yeah, and I just read a really good one called if an Egyptian cannot speak the speak English. But that off that blew my mind. So there’s just so much out there that it’s just so exciting to like, get your hands on books.

I know. I always think like, If only I could just do nothing else and read, I would never, I mean, at this point, no one would ever run out of anything. Even if they stopped creating any new books. I think we’d all be able to read forever.

Yeah, I could read forever from just the books in my house right now. Because I just there’s just like, oh, that sounds so good. I have to buy it. I’m like, What am I gonna read that? Well, hopefully I live to be 700. So

I know I easily have 100 books sitting on my desk right now. And it’s just brutal. But you do what you love a good story. But I’ll add another five to it today, I’m sure.

Yeah, I do the same.

Did anything, while you were writing this book really surprise you or something that changed with you?

Well, I started to become comfortable, more comfortable with who I am through the writing of this, I think, because I was along the ride with Norma. You know what I mean? Like, I was with her and I could understand her emotions, obviously, because I wrote them. But I also at a human level, I could understand her doubted herself and her uncomfortableness. So I think that was really helpful. But also I learned how to write a novel. This is my first novel, right?

It’s mind blowing to me. And it will be to everyone once they read it that this is your first novel, because I wouldn’t have believed it.

Yeah, though. But I had a lot of help. I had a lot of help with this. There were a lot of people who were just instrumental in saying wrong direction, or this is boring, you can do better babies, one from Pam Houston. Yeah, there was a lot of people who were really instrumental in helping me make this the best story it is. And I’m so grateful for them. Because sometimes you have a vision, and it’s so clear your head and you think you put it on the paper. And that isn’t always the case, you need somebody who’s not in your head to say that’s not coming through or something like that. So So yeah, I’m really super grateful to all the people who have helped me bring this book into the world.

I imagine I imagine that it’s the combination of a lot of parts and a lot of pieces. And I know that, you know, it seems like it was a bit of a labor of love at times of putting all this together and doing all of it. But you really came out to be something incredible at the end.

Thank you. I’m so grateful for you for saying that.

I’m sure it’s so tough when you got to put something out in the world and say, Okay, here it is now.

Yeah, it’s like I created this. I’m not regurgitating something that someone else has done and just talking about it in a flippant way. Not that I would anyway. But this is what I’ve created here for you to judge. And it’s like, oh…

it’s a heavy thing.

It is heavy, it is. So I’m glad that people are enjoying it and relating to it. Absolutely.

I mean, there’s just so much. I think people who look for so many things, in fiction will find something whether there are people who read for character or for voice or language, I think it’s all there because they all need to sort of for me, at least when I’m reading I need that voice to be there. Otherwise, it’s so hard once I mean I even in a book like this where some of the characters are not maybe people that you’d consider likable or what have you. If you can get that voice and follow along. It’s all worth it.

Yeah, I hope you I hope people would start and maybe they’re feeling like ooh, but they would follow along. Always see where it goes and, and know that it gets redemptive, it’s redemptive. That’s the best word. My agent gave me that and I was like, Oh, that was a gift.

Yes. I mean, once you start to you kind of just want to know what the end is going to be. There’s, you know, if you know, point A and point Z, you got to be able to see what happens from one to the other.

And like I said, at the beginning, I kind of give it away in the first sentence of chapter one. So, it’s not like a plot driven novel. It is very much a character driven novel. And it’s really getting invested in these characters and their journeys. And you need to see how it ends up.

Absolutely. And what a ride it is. There are so many moments where I was like, oh, no, there’s one moment in particular that involves Boston, and yeah, some people and I was like, oh, no, I need to know more. Yeah. I have to ask this as well, because this is your incredible debut novel. And I just want to know what’s next for you.

So I do have here in Canada, I have a short story collection coming out in the spring, maybe or summer, I’m not really sure there’s not really definitive time on it. But that is going to be coming out. So I’m working on that now. And I have written another manuscript first draft, which means is just a bunch of ideas on a page. Basically, it’s not actually a formed story yet. But yeah, I’m liking it. But I don’t like to talk about it. And I’ll tell you why. Is because I’ve tried to write other things. And when I talk about them, they seem to like go away. Okay, so I said, when I started this one, I it hooked me. I was like, I don’t want this one to go away. So I’m just, I’m not talking about it. Because I just want the story to stay with me and mold itself on my brain and be able to get it out on the page.

And we can wait. I will patiently wait. I think that sometimes good things come to those you know, it’s a thing. So I will patiently wait for whatever you write next because I cannot wait to see what it’s going to be because after The Berry Pickers, I’m in with whatever you write, I can’t wait to read it. Sometimes a book is just that good. But Amanda Peters, thank you so much for talking with us about The Berry Pickers today. I’ve had such a great time, and I can’t wait for readers to get their hands on this.

Thank you so much for having me.