From the author of The Berry Pickers, a novel about a woman who must confront her family’s buried truths and memories of passionate young love when her grandmother’s death leaves her as the only guide to her community’s future.
These two branches weave and intersect, much like the boughs of a tree, offering a complete portrait of Aliet’s life and how her past choices shape her present. A quietly impactful novel of community and personal growth, The Birthing Tree adds another facet to the conversation about the history of Indigenous people in North America.
The suspense built between these timelines is often thick with mystery, flashes of memory surfacing as Aliet’s senses are triggered. At times, though, it feels like Aliet as the narrator insincerely withholds information in service to the plot, while conversely deflating tension with excess foreshadowing, inserting prescient observations that reveal more than is necessary. Regardless, Aliet is a remarkably authentic character. The emotional responses stirred up by her, Kiju, and the supporting matriarchs had me in tears just eight pages in, and every 20 pages after that. I credit this to Peters’s earnest, immersive, scenic writing.
Peters punctuates the chapters of Aliet’s narrative with brief italicized comments on her journey; by the end, their source is clear, and roots the novel even more firmly in traditional culture. Without being directly addressed, the matriarchal feminism of that culture comes through loud and clear. A quietly compelling portrait of a young woman finding her truth.
