WAITING FOR THE LONG NIGHT MOON

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.