Waiting for the Long Night Moon: Stories

by Amanda Peters

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, 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 young woman finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. An old man remembers his life as he patiently waits for death. And a young girl nervously dances in her first Mawi’omi. The collection also includes the Indigenous Voices Award–nominated story “(Winter Arrives).”

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.

 

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Indigenous, Audiobook, Canada, Native American

245 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 13, 2024

About the author

Amanda Peters is a writer of Mi’kmaw and settler ancestry. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain Magazine, The Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review, and filling station magazine. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award (IVA) for unpublished prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers Trust Rising Stars program. Amanda has a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto and she is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe New Mexico. Amanda is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Theatre at Acadia University. She lives and writes in the Annapolis valley Nova Scotia with her fur babies Holly and Pook.

Reviews

[Madison Dillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid collection of stories, some longer and some bite-sized. All of them will feel like a well-crafted punch in the gut. Beautiful, raw, from-the-heart storytelling.

[Clover · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5
Honest, painful, and hopeful stories and experiences of Indigenous peoples, from the past and present.

Author's content warning: "Some of these stories deal with issues that may cause grief, sadness, anger and fear. Please take care of yourself as you read. Triggers include racism, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, pregnancy loss, murder, physical abuse and drug abuse. While pond of these stories are heavy, there are stories of joy as well. I hope you can find a smile in them.

These stories have it all. Some are short and sweet, some hard long and painful, others are the opposites. There was only one story I truly hated, Three Billion Heartbeats, and only because I was so angry at the unfairness, not because it was bad. It's a beautiful and moving collection from different times that truly encompass an honest experience faced by Indigenous peoples. There's addiction, street living, racism, death, residential schools, traditional knowledge, culture, and so much more.

Thankful to have this in my local library. Check your local library and request it!

[Wesley Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of short fiction! While I haven’t ready many short fiction collections, this one hooked me in from the beginning and flowed from story to story in a way that made hard to put down! A lot of different themes are covered, many of which touch on the history and treatment of indigenous peoples. If you see in at a shop, pick up a copy and give it read!

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was a great collection of short stories. I loved the writing style and the varied topics that were tackled. I am looking forward to reading the authors full length novel in the future.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of stories, many of which breath resilience, the love and lore of the land, and joy. Others draw you down a river of sadness and tug at your heart.

[th. · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were a solid collection of stories, and one I am truly grateful to have read as my knowledge of Native Americans are embarrassingly shallow (I'm from SEAsia, though with the age of internet and global connection, is not much of an excuse).

However, not all of the stories hit for me, a couple of them were misses - though I can't point which one, because they kind of flew over my head as I read. I might have been distracted while I read, so do take my words with a grain of salt. But a lot of these were really painful to read, and I'm glad the author has warned us of possible triggers earlier on.

The writing felt simple initially, but that made the few gems of sentences to shine more brightly. It works with the short stories format, but sometimes I do wish the author dealt with some of the topics a lot deeper. I have her other work in my TBR ("The Berry Pickers") and I look forward to read how her writing works in a longer format.

On a slight tangent, I started reading this because of Goodread's 2025 reading challenge with the whole bookmark thing, so I want to bring that up to thank the team. Thank you for opening up the horizon of reading for me.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted these stories to go deeper than they did. This was a slim volume, with 17 separate stories and generous line spacing. I felt like the author was playing around with concepts but didn't fully commit to any one.

One thing that I DID enjoy was how a lot of the stories were interwoven in some way, with a motif or character trait that reappeared from one story to the next. Clever.

Not a bad collection, but I feel the overall rating is a bit bloated due to the recent success of the author's novel and our general enthusiasm for bipoc narratives. Hopefully this helps bring more attention to all the great indigenous storytellers out there.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful new collection of short stories from the author of the award-winning book, The berry pickers. These stories highlight both the trauma and joys of the Indigenous experience. From stories about colonization to ones focused on missing and murdered Indigenous women. Told from both male and female perspectives, there is a good breadth of variety in both subject and tone. Moving and important and excellent on audio. Highly recommended for fans of authors like Billy-Ray Belcourt.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Stuck out her tongue to drink the rain” INCREDIBLE writing! I had somehow missed that the author of The Berry Pickers had a collection of Indigenous short stories. I binged right through them, they were so beautiful, even the tough or sad ones-they were beautifully raw.

[laszczaq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tender, heartbreaking collection about memory, survival & love.

"They carry guns and tasers, we carry drums and songs."

[Steph Percival · Rating 5 out of 5]

Waiting for the Long Night Moon blew me away.

Maybe it’s the English major in me, but I’m a sucker for a good short story and every single story in this collection landed for me, whether like a rock breaking the surface of water or a feather falling gently upon it.

If you haven’t read this book yet, do.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll be curious to see how these stories land with people who loved The Berry Pickers. Fiercely Indigenous stories, to me this is even more important than the novel. Harrowing read at times though. These stories will stick with you. Feel like some of them would/could/should be used by ela teachers.

[Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0⭐️

[Johnboy Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've recommended more mature and young adults . I liked the short stories, and I feel the author captures the soul in the storytelling. Waiting for the long night moon is my favorite one.

[Piyali · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so moved by the author's beautiful prose and the vignettes she presents to the authors of Native American experience, the whole spectrum of it, from different time periods starting from 18th century. But the stories are not in any chronological order. They are more slice of life, or a glimpse of a Native American experience during that time period under the dominance of white culture and the ramifications of that dominance on the lives of people. Ranging from saving a young French woman from the torture of English soldiers to Native American children being tortured in schools because they spoke their own language to a solitary Native American man finding connection with a little white girl, these stories are mesmerizing, heart rending, and so beautiful. Some stories are a few pages long while others are only a couple of pages, but they all end with beauty, and if not hope, but with emotion. I thought of There There by Tommy Orange as I read Waiting for the Long Night Moon. Tommy Orange effectively captures the anger and frustration of urban Indian experience where Oakland, CA plays an important role. In Waiting for the Long Night Moon, the emotion is not necessarily one of anger. It is one of quiet strength to persevere in the face of adversity. And that is what made this book so endearing - the age old resilience of human spirit.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A whole lot more warm and fuzzy than I was expecting with a lot of useful detail plus a wee bit of telling too, which fortunately sometimes felt more like a character’s stream-of-consciousness explanation to themselves.
These are largely explorations of real history and lived experience, especially in “The Golden Cross” and in the title story which is the best of all and could have been expanded into a novel.

[Paul Lemcke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent mix of indigenous short stories. Every single one is a worthwhile read, though they all have some element of pain to them. There are stories of poverty, violence, racism, and indigenous school horrors. But there are also forays into cultural identity that value family, the environment and the spirit world. I read this because I enjoyed The Berry Pickers, and I was not disappointed.

[Sarah Grimbly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection of short stories. The stories were beautifully written. Heartbreaking yet inspiring. I particularly enjoyed Tiny Birds and Terrorists, Three Billion Heartbeats (which completely broke me emotionally) and The Birthing Tree.

[Mary Hinkle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful collection of stories written by the author of THE BERRY PICKERS. The stories explore the trauma and hardship, as well as the joys and resilience, of the indigenous people of southeastern Canada, the author’s homeland.

[Victoria Kourtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Amanda Peters!! My favourites:
- tiny birds and terrorists
- angry white Indian
- waiting for the long night moon
- wolves
- in the name of God

[Gabriella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like really tied up in the “I was grandma’s favorite” canon, LOL. Overall, I think the stories are easy to read, and the language flows quite smoothly. I was glad to read it in book club, and will try to share a few thoughts without doing my usual essay-long review.

“Tiny Birds and Terrorists” is a touching story about coming alive in your support of the world and connection to others. We discussed in book club how it also exemplifies one of the most hopeful themes of this collection—that culture is always being reformed, it’s not just this static thing that only the earlier generations could perfectly inhabit!! I see this all the time with Black and Indigenous Carolinians, many of whom are returning to live on their family’s land, and making all sorts of new contributions to their communities. I also see it with people who (like me) are moving out of NC, but are still drawing on the connective patterns of migration we’ve seen our elders practice. As my book club facilitator said, this approach to belonging in one’s lineage is not about “passing it down, but passing it along!” What a hopeful message in a time where everyone claims we’ve lost all the recipes. In book club, we also discussed how all this relates to this video on non-Western approaches to time. Certain approaches say that time moves backwards, meaning that you can eventually fall into it. What a relief, to see that there are ways for you to fall into alignment with your heritage, instead of being irreparably separated from it due to the passage of time/ruptures of empire/pursuit of upward mobility/etc.

Peters’ stories travel back and forth in time rather quickly, and sometimes I didn’t quite understand where we were. But in some ways, I think that’s form following function. The short story format, along with the quick time jumps between stories, actually could be a way of embracing the frayed connections these people have with their identities. Stories like “Homecoming” show how boarding schools forcibly stripped people of certain connections to their heritage. However, stories like “Three Billion Heartbeats” or “Tiny Birds and Terrorists” show that there are always ways to reconnect with your home, sometimes through things as simple as appreciating the cathartic power of the outdoors, remembering lessons from your loved ones, or acting in defense of the values that were instilled within you. I think the stand-out story for me was “In The Name of God”, which is a haunting in-depth look at the boarding school experiences that were hinted at in other stories. Again, Peters is often showing many sides of the same topics, to reveal the reward that comes when you work to truly understand our relatives/loved ones who have had different experiences from us.

I will end with one of my favorite quotes, and with a recommendation to definitely try out this book—especially if you can read it in a group!

“I have a habit of looking for heretical art in churches. I’ve always loved the way people bestow their own stories on those who are trying to destroy them. How, as hard as they try, the conquerors can never really erase the vanquished. They always leave a trace, no matter how small. In my travels in Europe, I was always excited to find these small signs, to commiserate with the stonemasons, the Celts, the Druids, those who refused to be written out of history. But here, in this chapel where my grandmother was forced to her knees to pray, I want more than anything to find something rebellious.” (141)

[Christina Pitchford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tender, painful, loving, and diverse collection of short stories. Will remember and probably read again.

[Cynthia Roach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently saw Amanda Peters at The Cabot Trail Writer’s festival event, where she was nominated for the Alistair MacLeod short fiction prize, and I loved her middle age sass.
The facilitator mentioned Angry White Indian, and she said that this scenario had really happened to her when she was younger , only she did not speak out like in the story. I bought her book and the next morning, made my coffee and flipped to page 73 to read this story. Her description of the seedy bar is fantastic and I cried when the narrator blames her white mother for her white genes. Why? Because I’m full middle aged hormones …AND…because I am a white mother who gave white genes to my part Acadian, part indigenous daughter.
The end of the story is not what I was expecting, but so perfect. I was anticipating an angry verbal encounter, but the note she wrote at the back of her receipt was sufficiently saucy and full of facts.
The last line of the story was hilarious and turned my snivelling into snickers.
I then skipped to Le Grand Derangement, since I am Acadian. The narrator is a Mi'kmaq man, observing the deportation.
I went back to the beginning of the book. The first line of Pejipug (Winter Arrives) is: “The pale ones have returned, their skin the dull pink of the early sun on snow.” How fabulous is that sentence???🤩 Looking forward to the rest of the stories and more delicious reading.

[Angela A. Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this author and some of these short stories are better than the others, but all still really good, sad but good.

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.

[Jukaschar · Rating 4 out of 5]

For some reason I can't come up with an introductory sentence today. I don't know if it's more the virus I'm recovering from or that it's hard to talk about literature that deals with the trauma resulting from colonization.

This collection comprises a good balance of stories dealing with the hardships that Canadian indigenous people go or went through and stories that are more hopeful and of folkloric nature.

Books like this are just heartbreaking. I don't always have enough energy to read something like this, but I would like to check out more by this author in the future.

While the author would qualify as WbtM, the book is fiction, not SFF. Therefore I didn't use it in the Whatever your Weather challenge.

[Bella Bankes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magic. Tragic.

Amanda Peters’ second work is as moving as her first [ The Berry Pickers ]. The depth and truth and seriousness of her storytelling in this collection is often heavy, and stirs every human sense.

“Most of the time I can occupy myself with surviving, and don’t have to think about anything. …... The cold becomes secondary to my need for sleep. It softens my muscles, closes my eyes, and for a moment, tricks me into believing that I’m warm. The memories curl away like the smoke from a cigarette.”

An expansive collection of short stories that moves across time, yet stays connected by her writing voice in a way that feels in-the-moment and timeless.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to give this three stars as I think the subject matter is important. It's good to learn of the history here and the indigenous experience. But short stories are hard. It's hard to draw in a reader and foster a connection with so few pages. I am probably a little picky with my short stories. I've read a few authors that do it really well, and a lot of authors-many of which that write some pretty great full length novels- that don't.
I have heard great things about her novel the berry pickers. I will still pick that up at some point.
There were a few stories in here that I really liked. And the others were OK but I felt like I needed more time with them than what I was given.

[carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5
Waiting for the Long Night Moon is probably my new favorite short story collection. Every single story included carried its own weight. There wasn't a single one included that I thought didn't stand on its own. Each individual story does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to themes of indigenous joys, triumphs, and trauma all with Amanda Peters stunning writing. I was in awe the entire time. Especially when it came to "Wolves" and "A Strong Seed." Both had me absolutely sobbing my eyes out. After how much I loved this, I think I'm going to have to go back and read Amanda Peters' debut, THE BERRY PICKERS!

Thank you to Libro.FM for my ALC and to the publisher for the ARC copy.

[Chelsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s rare that a book of short stories renders a 5⭐️ rating from me. Each story was so beautifully written and it honestly felt like each story was better than the next. This collection was compromised of Native folklore, culture and history. Each story had a piece of Native culture that was sad, disturbing or uplifting. I don’t even think I could pick a favorite, they were all so good. Amanda Peters proves to be an amazing storyteller. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone, especially anyone that enjoyed her book, They Beery Pickers.

[Jacob Zeeryp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Racism exists beyond the bounds of what we encounter in our small bubble of lived experiences. I love Native American culture, but you can’t love it without being made aware of the atrocities perpetrated on their people and culture. I’m a Christian, and it saddens me, and I’m ashamed that throughout time Christianity and religion has been weaponized to keep down marginalized people. Love this author and loved this book. Eye opening and insightful, saddening and sorrowful all at once.