Wandering Stars
A novel
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4.2 • 137 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.
"For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you.” —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A sequel of sorts to Tommy Orange’s astonishing debut novel, There There, Wandering Stars spins a compelling family drama across multiple generations, mixing historical fiction with plainspoken poetry and some very personal stories. In the 1860s, Jude Star survives the Sand Creek Massacre—where the U.S. Army killed hundreds of Native Americans—only to be shipped to a Florida prison. There, a villainous young guard named Richard Henry Pratt systematically forces the ways of white men on Star’s people. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is demeaned and abused at a school founded by Pratt. In the present day, Jude and Charles’ descendants are still struggling with racism, generational trauma, and addiction. Orange achieves a gorgeous, organic, and lyrical flow of language throughout this powerful novel. Wandering Stars doesn’t shy away from depicting the horrors Native Americans have experienced, but across the generations, it never stops celebrating these characters’ indomitable spirits. Despite being fiction, Wandering Stars provides many harsh history lessons—but the story kept us intensely absorbed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Orange follows up his PEN/Hemingway-winning There There with a stirring portrait of the fractured but resilient Bear Shield-Red Feather family in the wake of the Oakland powwow shooting that closed out the previous book. The sequel is wider in scope, beginning with stories of the family's ancestors before catching up to the present. Those ancestors include Jude Star, who barely survives the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in what is now Colorado as a youth and is sent to a prison in St. Augustine, Fla., where he's forced to learn English and read the Bible. Jude later works as a farmhand in Oklahoma and raises his son Charles, who is sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. As a young man in the early 1900s, Charles drifts into San Francisco, where he becomes addicted to morphine while contending with the trauma of forced assimilation and unspecified abuse at Carlisle ("There is something deeper down, doing its dark work on him some further forgotten thing, but what is it? His life is about knowing it is there but not ever wanting to see it"). In the present, high school freshman Orvil Red Feather recovers at home in Oakland after being struck by a stray bullet during the powwow. Like Charles, he becomes addicted to opiates and struggles to connect with his cultural identity after his grandmother neglects to share details about their Cheyenne heritage. With incandescent prose and precise insights, Orange mines the gaps in his characters' memories and finds meaning in the stories of their lives. This devastating narrative confirms Orange's essential place in the canon of Native American literature.
Customer Reviews
Good book
A little long and drawn out at the end but enjoyable throughout
Another Beautiful Tommy Orange Story
The sense of being part of a tribe, a community or a village is lost to so may of us in this world. I don’t pretend to understand how deeply that loss feels to a Native American. But the struggle for a shared identity is universal to all of us that seek to connect with others.
I was so touched by his thanks to the reader in the afterword of this novel. The pleasure was ours, Tommy. Keep up the deep, honest river of words you craft so well. I, for one, will always read what you write.
Powerful Reading
Although I sometimes became lost with the characters as they wove their story, each one offered insight and thoughts to ponder. Families are complicated with the array of histories but Orange brings the reader to amazing understanding amidst confusion and loss. Strong descriptions and intricate use of words engage the mind and imagination.