The Birthing Tree

The novel alternates between two timelines in the life of Aliet Paul, a Mi'kmaw woman in rural Nova Scotia. The Mi'kmaq are an Indigenous people of eastern Canada. One timeline traces Aliet's childhood and adolescence from the mid-1960s through 1973; the other follows her return to her hometown in the mid-to-late 1990s.

Aliet's first-person narration opens with her birth in 1955. Her mother, Margaret (Maggie), died of an undiagnosed heart condition giving birth beneath the birthing tree, a sacred tree near a pond where Mi'kmaw women have delivered their children for generations. Aliet's grandmother Kiju, who served as midwife, raised her alone and taught her that the tree "holds our stories" (1). Kiju's husband built their small house before enlisting in World War II; he survived the war but died of pneumonia on the ship home. No photograph of Maggie's face exists, and she took the identity of Aliet's father to her grave, leaving Aliet with green eyes and light skin she cannot trace to anyone.

Each autumn, migrant apple pickers camp on Kiju's land. Among them are John, a boy whose family comes each picking season, and Big Ben and his wife Sally, Kiju's closest friends. Kenneth, a distant cousin who lives nearby with his violent father, Reg, also enters Aliet's world. Susan, a white girl from town, is her only school friend. When Kenneth leads the group to a forbidden shack in the woods and gets them lost, the misadventure fractures their fragile friendship. Kenneth's father forbids him from associating with the others, and Kenneth grows increasingly cruel, calling Aliet an orphan half-breed. Aliet suspects Ben might be her father.

Kiju's life's work is midwifery and herbal medicine, but she watches both erode as fewer women choose to give birth under the tree. At a town council meeting, a visiting doctor calls traditional birthing uncivilized. Kiju defends women's right to choose how they give birth. As they leave, a woman whispers that Kiju let her own daughter die, and Kiju slaps her across the face. Walking home, Kiju explains that Maggie's death was caused by a heart condition no one knew about. A month later, a bylaw makes any medical procedure outside a proper facility illegal.

At 15, Aliet takes the lead in delivering Sally's fifth child, a girl named Faye. Kiju coaches her through every step, singing the traditional birthing song, then cuts the umbilical cord with the family's ceremonial knife, engraved with the Mi'kmaw word we'ji'wet ("to give birth"). Kiju tells Aliet that next time she will cut the cord herself.

The bylaw's consequences arrive when Paulina, a woman herself born under the birthing tree, goes into labor and asks Kiju to deliver her baby there. Police arrive with a court order, extinguish the fire, and strap Paulina to a stretcher despite her protests. Kiju and Aliet are handcuffed and taken to the police station, warned against further witchcraft. Paulina later returns in tears: She was drugged at the hospital and cannot remember her son's birth. Kiju falls into a deep silence. Police begin patrolling the path to the tree, and no more babies are born there.

At 14, during a summer at Ben and Sally's house, Aliet watches a young Mi'kmaw boy falsely accused of theft in a pharmacy while the actual thief, a white boy, goes unnoticed. Aliet sees the truth but freezes and says nothing. Kenneth reveals the falsely accused boy is his younger brother and shoves Aliet into a ditch. The shame haunts her for decades.

Aliet's relationship with John deepens through letters, their first kiss at a summer dance, and their first sexual encounter when she is 17. The relationship suffers when John discovers that Aliet's white classmates never knew she was Indigenous. He is hurt that her light skin allows her to pass as white, a privilege he and Kiju have never had. Kiju calls Aliet's silence a lie of omission. They reconcile months later, but John announces he has enlisted in the American military. He asks Aliet to cut his braid before the military shaves his head, wanting someone who understands its significance to take it. She does, and he wraps it with sweetgrass and gives it to her.

John, deployed to Vietnam, is killed by a stray bullet during an evacuation in January 1973. At the funeral, Aliet privately burns his braid in the wood stove at his family's home, filling the room with the scent of sweetgrass. Pushed forward by Kiju, Aliet finishes school, earns a nursing scholarship, and leaves for the city. She does not return for decades.

The present-day timeline begins in September 1996, when Aliet, now 41, learns that Kiju has died of a heart attack. She drives home, scatters Kiju's ashes at the birthing tree, and receives Kiju's wooden box containing family documents, braids of hair, the ceremonial knife, and Kiju's handwritten recipe cards for her medicinal teas and birthing remedies.

Two weeks later, Aliet quits her nursing job and moves home, finding the house in severe disrepair. She reconnects with Susan, now married with children. Ben and Sally visit, spending days repairing the house. Sally confronts Aliet about her decades of isolation and urges her to study Kiju's recipe cards, telling her that "maybe is a weak word" (87).

Aliet takes a nursing job at the local hospital, where she meets Miriam, a white midwife. Though initially resentful that a white woman practices the craft her grandmother was persecuted for, Aliet recognizes Miriam's competence. Miriam encourages Aliet to consider midwifery, and the three women form a close friendship. A brief romance with William, a man with distant Mi'kmaw ancestry, results in pregnancy. After two tense days of silence, William returns and insists on being part of the child's life, accepting that Aliet will raise her.

Late one night, Kenneth appears at Aliet's door, out of prison and seeking to apologize. He hands her a photograph from Reg's belongings: Maggie smiling by a fire, the first image Aliet has ever seen of her mother's face. Then he reveals that Reg was Aliet's father, making Kenneth her half-brother. Kiju and Ben both knew and kept the secret. Weeks later, Aliet goes fishing with Ben and asks him directly. Ben confirms that Reg assaulted Maggie, and that they kept the truth to protect Aliet. When Aliet asks whether her mother wanted her, Ben responds firmly that Maggie loved her from the moment she knew and chose love despite the violence.

Aliet petitions the town to designate the birthing tree a historical site. The town grudgingly designates it a "Special Place" with no funding. Susan and Miriam help build a fence and install a stone plaque reading "The Birthing Tree."

On a stormy night in May 1998, Aliet's labor begins. Miriam and Susan walk with her to the birthing tree carrying herbs, tobacco, a blanket, and Kiju's knife. Aliet lowers herself between the roots where generations of women have given birth. As she labors, she sees spirits: Kiju, her mother, and many other women watching. The birthing song she believed she had forgotten returns to her. Miriam catches the baby girl, Susan washes her face with beech water, and Aliet cuts the umbilical cord with Kiju's knife, the act Kiju always said she must earn. She whispers the first words her daughter hears: "Kesalul, my girl" (286), meaning "I love you." Her blood joins her mother's in the earth beneath the tree. The only daughter of an only daughter of an only daughter has mended all that was broken.