Waiting for the Long Night Moon: Stories

by Amanda Peters Narrated by Megan Tooley, Ussani Taylor

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Our 2023 Discover Prize winner is back, and we couldn't be more thrilled. Taking you from the past to the present featuring characters young and old, Waiting for the Long Night Moon is a remarkable collection of love, grief, trauma and hope.

From the bestselling author of The Berry Pickers

In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place-from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water

In this intimate collection, Amanda Peters melds traditional storytelling with beautiful, spare prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he can no longer communicate with his own parents. A grieving mother finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. And a nervous child dances in her first Mawi'omi. The collection also includes the Indigenous Voices Award-winning and title story “Waiting for the Long Night Moon.”

At times sad, sometimes disturbing but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.

"Readers who engage will be well rewarded with a meaningful collection centering Indigenous people. Written in a woven style, integrating past and present, the stories often end at deft, surprising, and important moments ... Stunning ... Peters' award-winning debut created an audience ready for anything she writes, and they won't be disappointed by her memorable stories."-Booklist (starred review)

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

San Francisco Chronicle, A Best New Book
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
Ms., A Most Anticipated Title
Kirkus Reviews, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Zibby Media, A Most Anticipated Title for Fall/Winter

“This short story collection may be succinct, but Amanda Peters, an author of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry, manages to cover sweeping ground in her second book following The Berry Pickers. These stories bring to life water protectors, survivors of residential schools, keen lovers of nature, and so many more distinctive characters.” —Hannah Bae, San Francisco Chronicle

"Holding grief and joy in each hand, Peters’ latest tells of tradition, systemic discrimination and resilience." —Clare Mulroy, USA Today

"A must-read." —People

"Searing and insightful . . . Don't miss this one." —Karla Strand, Ms.

"Powerful . . . Many of the stories are deeply sad, yet awe, care, and community still emerge." —The Christian Science Monitor

"The eloquence of the Mi’kmaq storyteller’s prose drives narratives grounded in loss, grief, persistence, and redemption . . . Rooting her stories in a longing for their sense of family and community, the resilience of Indigenous cultural bonds is a consistent theme throughout Peters’ collection. Her characters are tenacious, thoughtful, and introspective, and therewithin lies their power." —Ryan Winn, Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education

"One of the best short story collections of 2025 . . . This memorable collection doesn’t shy away from the full spectrum of emotion. At times sad and disturbing, Waiting for the Long Night Moon is always redemptive and unafraid to find the possibilities for joy within a long history of grief." —Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

"The perfect bite-size reads." —Goodreads

"It’s easy to appreciate her characters’ pain and hope, and in particular, their profound love for the natural world . . . tender, lyrical and lovely." —Cat Acree, BookPage

"Amanda Peters has a gift for tracing the boundaries of time, place, and generations . . . Waiting for the Long Night Moon is evocative and spacious, with stories ranging from pre-settler times to a twenty-first century dance ceremony promising a young girl’s future. Peters writes movingly of spirituality, violence, loss, protest, hunting, fishing, tribal rituals and the powerful connections among friends and family." —Jane Ciabattari, Literary Hub

"Readers who engage will be well rewarded with a meaningful collection centering Indigenous people. Written in a woven style, integrating past and present, the stories often end at deft, surprising, and important moments . . . Stunning . . . Peters' award-winning debut created an audience ready for anything she writes, and they won't be disappointed by her memorable stories." —Booklist (starred review)

"Peters delivers a skillful set of tales featuring Indigenous characters in contemporary and historical settings . . . Peters casts an unflinching eye on the suffering of her characters, resulting in the heightened emotions of stories like 'Three Billion Heartbeats,' in which a young woman leaves home for the city to score drugs and faces mortal danger. It’s an affecting and wide-ranging collection." —Publishers Weekly

"An impactful collection of short stories . . . Many of the stories deal with grief—both spoken and unspoken; personal and generational; physical and spiritual—and how to survive in a world that’s trying to erase you. An impressive collection rooted in the grief, trauma, tradition, resilience, and hope of Indigenous peoples." —Kirkus Reviews

“Amanda Peters masterfully takes on complex and challenging subjects such as grief, loss, love, rage and resistance with a range of confident prose, from the subtle and understated to the poetic and resonant." —Michelle Good, author of Five Little Indians

“A sharp and compassionate collection that navigates the topographies of loss and resistance, never losing sight of how the land returns our senses, and heals.” —Carleigh Baker, author of Last Woman

"In the follow-up to her debut, national bestselling novel The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters returns, this time with a collection of stories: Waiting for the Long Night Moon. The stories in this collection captivate with a blend of traditional Indigenous storytelling and Peters’s signature spare, evocative prose. Both heart-wrenching and triumphant, these stories span an astonishingly wide spectrum of the Indigenous experience—from the humiliations of systemic racism to the enduring strength and dignity of Indigenous life. Peters reminds us, time and again, that where there is trauma, there is resilience, where there is grief, there is joy, and where there is loss, there is love and the promise of a future that rises from within the human experience. These are stories at their best, stories that will turn any reader’s preference of the novel to that of the short story form—this is a collection where each short story is its own explosion of the heart that puts itself back together again for the better. Peters has given us a gift, and while it is this book, it her time and energy she spends to create such brilliance on the page." —Morgan Talty, national bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez and Fire Exit: A Novel

Kirkus Reviews

2024-11-09
Seventeen stories that explore the joy and sorrow of the Indigenous experience.

Peters, winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for her debut,The Berry Pickers (2023), returns with an impactful collection of short stories. The book opens with “(Winter Arrives),” which chronicles the arrival of the “pale ones” to Indigenous shores. The unnamed narrator’s father tells them that the “pale-faced” people will leave like they have in the past, but the narrator is less sure: “I think they may stay.” The devastating consequences of colonization—especially as it relates to the violent destruction of Indigenous families—are explored in the stories that follow. “In the Name of God” follows a pair of siblings as they navigate the horrifying reality of growing up in a residential school meant to strip them of their language, religion, and culture. In “Three Billion Heartbeats,” a mother-daughter relationship breaks under the weight of the younger woman’s abusive relationship. Before her daughter left for the city to study, her fearful mother told her not to forget that she is “a woman of the land. A woman of the trees and the lake, you belong to the grass.” The essential connection between the Indigenous characters and nature echoes throughout the collection. In “Tiny Birds and Terrorists,” a grieving mother becomes a water protector. When the local paper calls them “a ragged band of eco-terrorists,” another protector says the term is used to make white people afraid of people like them: “People who know we need the earth more than it needs us.” Many of the stories deal with grief—both spoken and unspoken; personal and generational; physical and spiritual—and how to survive in a world that’s trying to erase you. If some of the stories feel less robust than others, Peters’ sparse and striking prose more than makes up for it.

An impressive collection rooted in the grief, trauma, tradition, resilience, and hope of Indigenous peoples.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193710332
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	02/11/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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