Wandering Stars

• Author: Tommy Orange
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: February 27, 2024
• Publisher: Knopf

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout best seller There There —winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the John Leonard Prize, the American Book Award, and one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2018— Wandering Stars traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Red Feather’s shooting in There There.

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.

Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family.

Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.

I read Tommy Orange’s debut novel a few years ago, and was blown away by both the story and the way Orange told it. It felt like a standalone novel, so I was thrilled to hear that a second book was coming out. I didn’t realize that this book was simultaneously a prequel, a sequel, and a standalone, although I do suggest reading There There first to get the most out of this novel. 

The story starts out with a harsh depiction of the Sand Creek Massacre, where we are introduced to Jude Star, a young Native survivor of the massacre. His people are all dead, and he has nowhere to turn, so he just travels around. Jude is incredibly perceptive, and he is highly connected to his spirituality. When he is placed into a brutal residential school where the motto is “Kill the Indian, save the man,” everything is designed to strip their culture and heritage from them. Their hair is cut, they aren’t allowed to speak their tribal languages, practice their own religion, eat their traditional foods, or even dress in their usual clothing. Coming from one traumatic event and landing in another situation that is traumatic in a different way, Jude’s life has been taken out of his control and the intergenerational trauma that he already carries is further compounded by his present day trauma. 

Orange provides us with a family tree at the beginning of the book, starting with Jude Star and his wife and Victor Bear Shield and his wife, leading all the way to the three Red Feather brothers, Loother, Orvil, and Lony. We take a meandering trip through the family line, learning more about each of them and the journey that they take in life. It was a heartbreaking and fascinating look at how the trauma of hundreds of years of genocide, dehumanization, and colonization have impacted the lives of Native Americans—Jude’s own son Charles is sent to the same residential school, where the relationship with a female student, Opal Victoria Bear Shield is what gets him through. But the echoes of being separated from their heritage, their culture, their people echoes through the generations. Charles and Opal and their offspring all struggle in different ways, whether it is with forming a connection to their heritage, addiction, alcoholism, depression, suicide, or a breakdown in traditional family and community structure.

I quickly found myself engrossed with each member of the family. Often in generational stories I find myself more interested in some stories than others, yet Orange is immensely talented in creating complex, multilayered, and alluring characters that it is near-impossible to look away from. His writing makes it easy to be fascinated by each generation of this family, and their fight to stay connected and maintain their heritage in a meaningful way. Each character does this in a unique way, so it was interesting to watch them find their own path.

Towards the end of the book, we see characters from There There, and learn what has happened in the aftermath of the Powwow shooting. A massacre bookends the story and it somehow feels fitting in a story about a people who have suffered so many massacres over time. After being shot, Orvil becomes reliant on pain medication to numb his emotions, while Lony copes with his PTSD by cutting to try and connect with his Cheyenne ancestors after learning that they used to cut themselves in a ritual, and Opal is attending rituals and using peyote in an attempt to heal her family. Everyone is struggling, and rather than coming together to heal collectively, they’re all working on themselves independently and not doing a great job of it. 

This is a book of joy and pain, happiness and sorrow, rage and acceptance, trauma and healing, grief and hope, the past and the present. It was beautifully written and it felt like the author really changed his writing style to be a little more almost flowery, painting an even more beautiful picture with his words. This was a tough story to read, but fulfilling and exquisite, and I strongly recommend Orange as an outstanding writer. I look forward to seeing what other books he puts out in the future.

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