A Collection of Short Stories Centered on Indigenous Life

Amanda Peters came onto the scene with her debut novel, The Berry Pickers, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. Readers from around the world fell in love with her writing, so of course, we have all been highly anticipating her next book, Waiting for the Long Night Moon.

Peters is of Mi’kmaq descent, and these stories mostly center the familial connections between Indigenous communities. Many of the stories are ruminating on themes around grief—the loss of family, culture, community—but they each approach the idea from different perspectives. The stories never feel thematically repetitive or overdone. The stories dovetail well together, creating such a fulfilling reading experience.

As a couple of highlights, in the first story, “Tiny Birds and Terrorists,” a woman goes into the woods with her grandfather as she’s grieving the loss of her baby daughter. She feels adrift, but spending time with her grandfather helps ground her again. She then joins a group of activists fighting for clean water and finds healing with other Indigenous water protectors.

“Three Billion Heartbeats” follows a young woman trying to navigate the city after moving there for college. Before long, she’s trapped by a violent relationship. Without going into spoilers, this story highlights the murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit (MMIW) crisis.

For audiobook fans, the audiobook is beautifully performed by Megan Tooley and Ussani Taylor. Tooley performs her selection of stories with such attention to the characters and the depth of their emotions. She has this way of capturing the relationships between characters. Ussani Taylor performs a handful of stories from the perspectives of men and boys. These stories are challenging, but Taylor does a fantastic job of embodying these characters and their lives.