Celebrate American Indian Heritage Month with an Excerpt from Waiting for the Long Night Moon (Exclusive)

If you loved Berry Pickers Amanda Peters, her new short story collection is a must read.

Waiting for the Moon in the long nightout February 11, 2025, from Catapult, Peters’ debut collection of stories “describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide range in time and place,” according to the publisher. It explores contact with the first European settlers, to the forced relocation of native children, to today’s struggle for clean water.

In what Catapult calls “beautiful, spare prose,” Peters “describes the dignity of a traditional way of life, the humiliation of systemic racism, and the resilient strength to endure.”

Read an exclusive excerpt below Waiting for the Moon in the long nightin celebration of National American Indian Heritage Month.

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‘Waiting for the Long Night Moon’ by Amanda Peters.

Catapult

The mother’s feet sink into the mud, and the difference between flesh and earth is almost impossible to distinguish. Blato hugs her as if welcoming a long-lost sister. I bend down and trace a circle around her ankle where the mud and my mother meet. My dress is muddy, and my mother’s soft hand rests on my head.

“Epit’jij, pay attention to the grandmother. Come, my girl.”

I watch as she puts her hand in the water, grasps the bottom of the stem, using a flint blade, gifted by Naku’set but shaped by my father, to cut the stems from the ground.

The sun is just rising over the water; water fairies dance to welcome the sunrise. The clouds are the color of cold hands that become warm again. It’s too early even for the birds. Grandma and mother hum in unison, low and low. It’s a song I don’t know, but my mother assures me that it’s simply hiding in my heart, waiting for the right moment.

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Yesterday we left the camp, leaving my father with four younger children. They waved as we ducked into the forest, finding the river and following it to the ocean. We stayed awake praying to the full moon, fingers, toes and bellies full of the water she gave us. It wasn’t until the sun began to creep above the line where the water meets the sky that Grandma opened her eyes and gestured for us to grab our gathering tools and follow her.

Grandma knows the best places to pick sweet grass. “Where water that tastes like tears meets water that tastes like a river. Here Kisu’lkw placed the most fragrant and the sweetest,” he whispers.

I think she knows that the pink color of the sky will shatter if we speak too loudly. My mother often says that I am like my grandmother.

The mother moves forward, her feet slowly sinking into the ground again. I follow him and enjoy the cold, soft mud. I pause to wiggle my toes, small grains of mud splashing and joining the rest of the wet earth. Mother uses her hand to push the tall grass aside, allowing us to move effortlessly until she stops, keeping the grass away from me in the direction of the sun. He runs his hand over the green stalks as they fall away until only the greenest ones remain, shining in the early morning light. The sweet smell reaches my nose and I inhale.

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“This is how you know it’s the hair of the great mother, epit’jij. It will shine.”

Grandma leaves, gathering still in the silence of the dawn, while mother shows me how to cut the grass. Later, when it’s dry and we’re home among our own, we’ll braid it like we do our hair. As I reach under the cool morning water and grab my first stem, I begin to hum softly.

Excerpt from WAITING FOR THE LONG NIGHT MOON by Amanda Peters. Posted with permission from Catapult. Copyright © 2025, Amanda Peters.

Waiting for the Moon in the long night by Amanda Peters is out on February 11, 2025 and is available for pre-order now, wherever books are sold.

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