Literature
Maine: Memory and Inspiration
Words & Photo By Amanda Peters
The drive from Nova Scotia may seem daunting to some, but for many of us, it’s a homecoming of sorts—my family has a long history with the state of Maine. For my dad, Maine is a memory of hard work under the hot sun. But it’s also the one place he calls a second home. He and my aunts and uncles will leave the Annapolis Valley, here in Nova Scotia, and drive the six hours to Maine for lotto tickets. But it’s not riches, at least not the monetary kind they are seeking. They are searching for those elusive memories that come alive, the moment they hit Route 9. Driving past the fields and through “The Barrens,” they are able to return to childhood summers, of backbreaking work, of campfires and storytelling of swimming in the lakes, and sneaking off to the woods.
For me, Maine is inspirational. I’d grown up hearing the stories of my family working in the Maine berry fields. In the store where my family shopped in the summers, a pet monkey took a particular dislike to one of my uncles and attacked him. My father often tells this story with tears running down his face, the pictures in his mind, the ones I can’t see, of my uncle running down the middle of the road swatting at a monkey as he tried to get it off him. This is a particularly special story because I never knew that uncle; he died a few months before I was born. But he lives on in the stories that my dad can’t tell without laughing. And my dad has a great laugh.
Another tale that can’t be told without laughter is the one where my dad and his two younger brothers decided to sneak off through the woods to the lake for a swim. It must have been hot out there, no shade in August. Before they could get too far, my gramp noticed that they were gone and hopped in the truck to go look for them. They hid in the woods, watching their father drive by, listening to him calling for them, trying to stay quiet and still. That is until one of my uncles stepped on a hornet’s nest. When he finally emerged out of the woods—his brothers laughing—he was stung from head to toe. Back at the camp, sore and embarrassed, he endured the other pickers calling him skite’kmuj; ghost, or maybe even monster. Teasing has been and remains an important part of our Mi’kmaq culture. He claims he was too young to remember, but I have my doubts. Childhood embarrassment has a tendency to last.
Then there was my aunt, who I am told liked to sneak off with the boys, but we’ll leave that story untold.
So, while I’ve grown up with these stories, I’d never considered writing them down. I write fiction. (Even writing this article for MyMaine makes me feel insecure; nonfiction is scary.) But there was something different about researching the story about my family’s history, which built the groundwork for The Berry Pickers. The difference was location. I’d been to Maine before for work, never stepping in the berry fields, just driving past my family’s history, as if I were a stranger. But I wasn’t a stranger; I am a descendant.
So, in August 2017, my dad and I decided to travel down to the berry fields. He’d spent a good amount of time trying to convince me that there were stories there, generations of stories just waiting to be collected, to be told, to get the appreciation they deserve.
We set out in my Prius, a car so quiet my dad—who did most of the driving—kept forgetting to turn it off. At first, the drive was uneventful. When we finally got to the edge of those fields, with those stories coursing through my veins, I could see it. My grandfather gone since 1996, using twine to create rows to let the pickers know where they’d been and where they needed to go. My nan cooking over the fire, my uncle stung and teased, my gramp playing the fiddle around the fire at night, the stars bright in the summer skies. I finally understood that there were stories there to tell. And my dad, ever so gracious, has not once said, “I told you so.”
And now that I’ve written about Maine, I tend to see Maine in the literature I enjoy. Heartwood by Amity Gaige, a work lush with the Maine landscape and the people that make Maine unique. A story full of mystery, grief and determination. Morgan Talty and his telling of our stories: Night of the Living Rez, a short story collection full of interwoven stories about the realities of living on the reserve. Also by Morgan Talty, Fire Exit, a story about family and the injustices of blood quantum. And a must read if there ever was one. Even a New Brunswick writer who now lives here in Nova Scotia, Tammy Armstrong, wrote a book called Pearly Everlasting, inspired by the story of Effie M. Beal, the wife of a Maine lumberjack who once nursed an orphaned bear cub. This brings me full circle to the close relationship that the Canadian Maritimes has with Maine. We are like siblings; we may have differences but the older we get, the more we understand how familiar we truly are.
Learn more by visiting amandapetersauthor.com. Scan the QR code to pre-order The Birthing Tree, released September 2026.