The Birthing Tree
A Novel
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- Expected Sep 1, 2026
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Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Carnegie-Winning Author • Winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize • A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
From the bestselling author of The Berry Pickers, an unforgettable 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
Born under the shadow of a birthing tree sacred to generations of Mi’kmaq women, Aliet Paul grows up outside a small Nova Scotia town with her fierce, loving grandmother Kiju. Her mother died bringing Aliet into the world under that very tree; her father remains a mystery no one will name. Aliet’s childhood is shaped by seasonal apple pickers, the medicinal wisdom of the old ways, and the quiet, steadfast presence of John, a boy who becomes her anchor.
But the world beyond their community is changing. Traditional midwifery is condemned, prejudice deepens, and when the wrong person witnesses a birth, the consequences are disastrous. As Aliet comes of age, she navigates love, loss, and a personal tragedy that veers her from the path her grandmother wanted for her. She becomes a nurse trained in modern medicine, yet she carries Kiju’s teachings close, tucked beside memories of the tree that once welcomed new life.
Years later, when the call comes that Kiju has died, Aliet returns home to a crumbling house, a community scattered, and a past she thought she’d outrun. As Aliet restores the house room by room, something inside her stirs awake: the threads of her lineage, the old ways of her grandmother, and the mystery of her own bloodline.
As Aliet digs to uncover who her family really is, each revelation pulls her deeper into a web of long-guarded silences, dangerous loyalties, and generational wounds that refuse to stay buried: Someone knew the truth about her mother’s final moments. Someone knew what happened in the orchard all those years ago. And someone wants the past to remain undisturbed.
Spanning decades of loss and reclamation, this sweeping yet intimate novel follows one woman’s journey to protect the land, the traditions, and the memory of the women who came before her—and to decide which parts of her inheritance she will carry into the future.
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.
