Waiting for the Night Song

By: Julie Carrick Dalton

Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik

Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

"Narrator Barrie Kreinik sensitively delivers the many themes that wend through this audiobook, including friendship, family, secrets, lies, and climate change and its effects on woodlands...Kreinik's relaxed pace allows listeners to enjoy the vivid descriptions of the rural New Hampshire forest where the girls grew up." (AudioFile magazine)

A startling and timely debut, Julie Carrick Dalton's Waiting for the Night Song is a moving, brilliant novel about friendships forged in childhood magic and ruptured by the high price of secrets that leave you forever changed.

Cadie Kessler has spent decades trying to cover up one truth. One moment. But deep down, didn’t she always know her secret would surface?

An urgent message from her long-estranged best friend Daniela Garcia brings Cadie, now a forestry researcher, back to her childhood home. There, Cadie and Daniela are forced to face a dark secret that ended both their idyllic childhood bond and the magical summer that takes up more space in Cadie’s memory then all her other years combined.

Now grown up, bound by long-held oaths, and faced with truths she does not wish to see, Cadie must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures, and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farm workers and locals.

Waiting for the Night Song is a love song to the natural beauty around us, a call to fight for what we believe in, and a reminder that the truth will always rise.

A Macmillan Audio production from Forge Books

©2021 Julie Carrick Dalton (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Julie Carrick Dalton’s deftly constructed, urgent yet slow-burning debut novel reads like a warning from the frontlines of our rapidly deteriorating natural world." (Omar El Akkad, American War)

"Both a timely and timeless literary mystery, Waiting for the Night Song is as seductive as it is smart, blending the allure of Julie Dalton's beloved rural New Hampshire setting with the dark undercurrents of a community's racial divisions and betrayals. This is a story of love, of home, of friendship and family, of a childhood's innocence and an adult's comeuppance, all of which are in the line of fire in this beauty of a page turner." (Michelle Hoover, award-winning author of Bottomland and The Quickening)

"Waiting for the Night Song is a beautiful book that is also a hell of a read. Complex characters, unforgettable setting, taut storyline, big ideas." (Ashley Shelby, author of South Pole Station)

Great book

I really enjoyed this book, suspense, past and present. I will definitely be looking for more books by this author.

Beautifully written

I enjoyed every moment of this book. The author has a real talent for creating a vivid scene that engages your senses and pulls you into the experience.

Hard to keep characters straight.

This is an interesting story, just hard to stay in the timeline and keep the characters straight.

Night Song

Interesting story line, complicated by character's early life. Was woven together well, with a surprising twist at the end

Captivating Story of Love in a Changing World

I really enjoyed this story that followed a young girl’s friendships and trauma into her adult life. I’ve found that often what happens to us in our youth echoes throughout our life. The heroine witnesses a violent act early in her life. How she develops as an adult is the heart of the story. This will include how racism affects choices the persecuted must make. As an environmentalist I particularly loved how she learns that environmental dilemmas are often not a point to point solution but are as in nature much more incredibly complex. Lastly I read a lot and this novel kept me wanting to read more and wasn’t entirely predictable. I would highly recommend this book to those that like a great story set in the challenges of the modern world.

Great book

I enjoyed her writing style and the story was compelling. I couldn't put it down.

Enjoyed this One

Youthful friendship and adventures then reuniting as adults. A secret from 27 years ago still lingers. I enjoyed the memories of being young along with the suspense of keeping this secret tragedy into adulthood.

An interesting story

The story is interesting, and the narrator did a good job. Some of the metaphors and cliches were a bit much, and that's the only downside. I enjoyed getting to know the characters, and there were twists and turns I didn't expect. We're left hanging a bit in the end but it's easy to imagine how that turned out.

Boooorrring…..

The author kept trying to push her personal agenda which gets old. Everyone in my book group was disappointed and felt similar. Too bad! We were so excited after meeting the author at a book signing in park city.

Make up your mind

Pick a lane, can not be mystery, environmental and immigrant rights all in one book. Makes for difficult to fish book. The main character was unlikable