"The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me"

Sara Nickerson began her professional writing career working in television and film. Her first novel, How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, started out as a screenplay she wrote while studying screenwriting at the University of Washington. Her second novel, The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me, was inspired by her very first job: picking berries on a small blueberry farm in the Pacific Northwest. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two sons, two cats and one brave Chihuahau.

Nickerson applied the Page 69 Test to The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me and reported the following:

From page 69:

But what I was really trying to say was this: Your food comes from a grocery store and then—WHAM—it doesn’t. It comes from dew and dirt and sunshine. From old man hands and clanging metal buckets. It comes from flies and heat and voices without faces.

It comes from me. Melissa.

For my main character, Missy, this is the summer of change. She’s twelve. Her father is getting remarried. Her friends are away at summer camp, and they want to drop their nicknames. Missy would like things to stay exactly the same forever, but when she and her older brother take a summer job in a blueberry field, a new kind of change takes her by surprise.

Missy is at that age where magic can still exist, but barely. Like, if everything lined up, a wardrobe could actually lead to a new world. But it would have to line up perfectly. On page 69, though, Missy realizes she’s found a new kind of magic, not the wardrobe kind. She’s discovered the magic of actually growing up and stepping into the world on her own. Page 69 is the end of a chapter, and the very last word in that chapter is the name, Melissa. Like her friends did earlier, Missy re-names herself here, to be this new person in this new and magical world.

Visit Sara Nickerson's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Sara Nickerson & Pico.

--Marshal Zeringue