The Birthing Tree
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Sept 1, 2026
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning and bestselling author of The Berry Pickers, an unforgettable novel of family, legacy and secrets, following one woman as she confronts buried truths, lost love and the fragile future she alone must protect
“My mother died pushing me into the world. . . . I don’t know if I saw her face or if she saw mine. Only that, by the first crack of thunder, she was gone.”
So begins the powerful new novel by critically acclaimed, award-winning author Amanda Peters.
In 1955, Aliet’s mother dies in childbirth beneath the birthing tree, a large old oak, where Indigenous women have been giving birth for longer than anyone can remember. Aliet’s grandmother, the local midwife, has assisted in the successful births of babies there for decades. Yet on that fateful day, tragedy strikes, and it’s her own daughter, Maggie, who dies under her care.
After her mother’s death, Aliet is raised by her grandmother and becomes an apprentice to her knowledge of midwifery and Indigenous medicine. At the base of the birthing tree, Aliet becomes the keeper of sacred knowledge, educated so that she may, one day, carry on these traditional practices. Yet, when Aliet grows older, she unexpectedly turns away from her grandmother, her community and all that she’s learned.
Years later, after her grandmother dies, Aliet returns home to a crumbling house and the memories she thought she’d outrun: the love and loss that shaped her young life; the teachings of her grandmother; and the mystery of her own bloodline. She also realizes that to truly start her life over again, she must finally come to terms with a long-held family secret and the unresolved heartbreak and grief of her past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Peters (The Berry Pickers) draws on her Mi'kmaq heritage for this nuanced depiction of the tribe and its threatened traditions. Aliet is raised in 1960s Nova Scotia by her grandmother Kiju, a revered tribal healer and midwife. Aliet's teenage mother died giving birth to her under the eponymous tree—its roots shaped in the form of an embrace—where the Mi'kmaw women have their babies. Peters alternates from Aliet's childhood in the '60s to her return home in the '90s after Kiju dies and Aliet leaves her job as a nurse to reclaim the house where she grew up. Aliet's memories of her childhood are colored by a kind boy who visited with his apple-picker family each season, and by a bully named Kenneth, who called her an "orphan half-breed." Kenneth's words torment Aliet, as does a violent act he committed when she was a teen, which is revealed late in the novel ("When I was seventeen, my world turned upside down, and I had abandoned this house... naively thinking that the past would remain the past"). The alternating storylines gradually converge, and the narrative builds to a satisfying resolution. It's a tender story of self-discovery and the power of generations of women.
