There is no question that Orange is a talented writer, and that this book has a storyline that includes a number of important topics, but it all felt unfocused and, well, wandering, in its delivery. The individual segments bounce from character to character and it is very hard to follow, leaving me less than connected to any of them, and so the forward momentum felt minimal. There are some glimmering moments of profound insight, and some very beautiful and poetic prose, but I felt distanced from any emotion or connection to the characters or their stories.

A solid, multi-perspective follow-up to Tommy Orange's brilliant There, There. (Which is not necessary to have read before Wandering Stars--it can stand alone--but helpful in order to recognize narrative threads.) Like There, There, the story covers many aspects of American history from the Native point of view., including the fallout experienced by ensuing generation but is more sprawling. Themes of addiction,, cultural identity and belonging, and
family. ,

This was a nice compliment to the book There There. While I enjoyed this story, it didn't stick with me as well as There There. Tommy Orange definitely has an incredible storytelling style and I'll be interested to read whatever he puts out next.

This book was the long awaited companion to one of my favorites, There, There. This one is connected to There, There in that it follows generations from the 1860s from the Sand Creek Massacre up to the shooting in TT. While I still loved the writing in this one, I felt much less connected to these characters. I think part of it was the quick jump between characters which led to story to fell more like several, connected short stories. I enjoyed the portrayal of generational trauma and the emotional impacts that are ever lasting, the reminders of the tragedies of the past, and the gripping, raw, writing that Orange provides.

📖 Book Review 📖

📱🎧 "Wandering Stars" by Tommy Orange

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
published February 27, 2024

Another well-written, heartbreaking story about America's war on its own people jumping from past to present. This novel is a standalone but also could be a sequel to Orange' s debut novel from 2018 as we meet relatives to Orvil Red Feather. The genocide, institutional violence, addictions and traumas the native Americans faced throughout history are very present and raw in this emotionally heavy read. Going back to 1864’s Sand Creek Massacre readers meet Star who after surviving a brutal slaughter of his family and friends is sent to Fort Marion Prison to learn English and Christianity, and eventually sent to the Carlisle Indian School where all native customs and culture will be removed. Star’s son Charles is also sent to this school where he meets Opal. They picture a future together, away from the rules and cruelty where they can be who they want to be.
The descriptions of the conditions and ways Native American children were taken from their families and forced to “become white” was horrible to read, especially since it is true.

Readers find Opal in 2018 in Oakland California. The matriarch of her small
family, 3 grand- nephews and her sister, all barely holding it together after her nephew Orvil is shot at a tribal
festival where he was dancing. He gets addicted to prescription pain meds to heal the wound, but also the mental trauma of this. Lony, Orvil’s younger brother witnessed the whole shooting and his grandmother picking Orvil up to get him to safety. Lony is cutting himself now to release the pain from his PTSD.

I felt the story bounced a lot in the beginning, telling the stories of previous generations and until I read of Opal as an old woman struggling to keep her family above water, does the whole story get put together. Parts of the novel read as fiction where others felt very non-fiction, historical and factual. The addiction, poverty and just plain survival of the Native American people, while also bringing up themes of identity, generational trauma, and the struggle of where you come from make this a heavy but worthwhile read.


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In Part 1, we're introduced to people who survived the Sand Creek Massacre, boarding schools, being stolen, before we're introduced to their descendants in Part 2. Those descendants (and peripheral characters) pick up the story of Orvil Red Feather from when he was shot dancing at the Oakland powwow in Orange's earlier There There.

There are so many voices and character names it can be hard to track without very clear indication of date for each chapter. But honestly, this really just drives home how cyclical and repetitive the trauma of colonization is and how this inheritance is not diluted with time, only changed.

cw/ self-harm, suicide, suicidal ideation, addiction, alcoholism, murder, shooting, mass shooting

multi-generational, multi-POV literary fiction that depicts generational trauma and the weight of existing after trauma. It was a heavy read and I had to take lots of breaks in between because it was hard for me to read through some of the internal dialogues. There were aspects of the book that I could appreciate and I think that outweighed how difficult it was to get through.

I highly recommend you try this book, but def be warned that there’s heavy shit in here.

Actual Rating 2.5

Similar to the author’s debut, this is another work of literary fiction that follows many characters and looks at Indigenous peoples in the U.S., from 1864 to present.

I enjoyed how this work was set up, following the same family from the Sand Creek Massacre to the present day. The author did an excellent job keeping the whole thing cohesive with similar things that played out similarly (and differently) over the centuries. This was probably the aspect I enjoyed most. I also liked that the purpose of this work felt like it was to help readers consider the history of Indigenous folks in the U.S. and how they’ve had to endure and overcome hardships many of us don’t often see or consider.

But like the first book by this author, I had a difficult time connecting to the characters. I think it’s in large part due to the writing style. There are so many places where it’s pages and pages of introspection, and some characters’ POVs consisted almost solely of that. I could certainly see why the author chose to tell the story in this way, but it just didn’t work well for me to stay engaged or connected to the characters. Then there was the plot. There wasn’t really a plot and nothing cohesive aside from the family and themes to keep everything together. This isn’t totally unexpected for literary fiction, but in this case, it didn’t work for me.

If you like literary fiction following a family over time that focuses on generational trauma and identity, then you’ll probably like this one. I do recommend reading There, There before this one though, as there is overlap. While I didn’t love it, it was still a good read and I know many other folks loved this one.

WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange serves as both a prequel and a sequel to the events in THERE THERE. Orange writes that "hiding doesn't always mean hidden away, out of sight, but could mean transformation," and in these pages, we see the complexity and nuance of the struggles in life, with a lens to the experiences of Indians in the United States. 

There is a family saga where addiction, trauma, and illness show the difficulty of existing and yet the beauty of surviving when everything is against you. Society can try so hard to stifle individuals and cultures, and there is a desperation when pieces are missing, but there is a richness when you keep going.

(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

I had a really hard time getting through this one. The narrative wanders (pun intended) and never really came together for me. 2.5 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free review copy.

I agree with many other reviewers that this is simply a beautiful book! This story is so important and deserves to be out in the world. I am looking forward to reading anything else by Tommy Orange, such wonderful writing and prose.


Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the arc!

Tommy Orange is such an immense talent! Another absolute knockout by him. I don’t want to give away any plot as the element of going in blind made it for me. This was so well written and engaging start to finish.

This time around, I thought the shifts in perspective halted and stalled the narrative momentum a little too often. And, while the latter half of the book delves deeply into the cycles of addiction, these sections began to feel repetitive without adding to or compounding the lessons of the preceding chapters.

But there is beautiful and poignant writing throughout this book, especially Chapter 3, "A Son," which I will return to often for how well it describes Jude Star's seemingly overnight transformation from adolescence into manhood. An excellent example of how to write a compelling chapter in a novel that is character-driven. And while the narrative doesn't pick up from the events of "There There" until halfway into the book, I thought Orange's immersive exploration into Native history was patient and well-delivered. His style is crisp and self-aware and I'm glad to have finally read this one; I'm excited to read his future work.

I read “Wandering Stars” immediately after reading its predecessor novel, “There There,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist and widely regarded book by then first time author Tommy Orange. “Wandering Stars” is Mr. Orange’s follow-up story to “There There” and is written in a similar, non traditional style. Each chapter uses a different voice, sometimes telling the story from a character’s first person point of view, describing their own experiences and feelings, while other chapters are written in the third person, discussing the character’s actions and feelings. At some points the story even is told in the form of a letter or as one character’s effort to write his story for posterity in the form of a book.

“Wandering Stars” is, in some ways, a prequel to “There There,” providing a broad understanding of the Sand Creek Massacre of Native Americans in 1864, the subsequent founding of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School where Indian children were forcibly removed from their families and subjected to extreme efforts to eradicate their heritage and placed in white families for adoption. After this, the novel turns into a sequel, following the lives of the characters first introduced in “There There.”

At times it’s difficult to ascertain which character is speaking, as the dialogue between characters blend together without identifying who is saying what to whom, and the chapters often are not logically or chronologically related. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter, because the impact of the book as a whole is overwhelming powerful. It’s a devastating indictment of the way white, European settlers treated the original inhabitants of this land we currently live on and the horrible effect this history continues to have on subsequent generations of Native Americans, only recently starting to be acknowledged and, in very minor ways, attempting to be rectified.

I received a free advanced copy of “Wandering Stars” by NetGalley, author Tommy Orange, and his publisher, Knopf, for which I am extremely grateful. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, particularly after just finishing “There There.” My review of “Wandering Stars” is given entirely VOLUNTARILY.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced reader's digital copy (ARC) of "Wandering Stars: A Novel" by Tommy Orange. "Wandering Stars" is a follow-up to "There, There," which I truly enjoyed. Thank you, Mr. Orange, for continuing the saga of Orville and his family and explaining how the violence at the Pow-Wow at the end of the novel "There, There" impacted them.

I genuinely appreciate reading any book by this author because he educates the reader and provides the truth about Native American history.  He does not sugarcoat the impact of alcohol, drugs, cultural identity, and multi-generational trauma on Native Americans and clears up many of the historical inaccuracies taught about Native Americans. "Wandering Stars" is a well-written, beautiful, powerful, tragic, and haunting novel I will never forget.    

Kudos, Mr. Orange.

A follow up to Tommy Orange’s incredible book “There, There,” the reader is given further insight into what happened to the family after the first book. The ramifications of the violence at the pow wow and the impact on the individuals and family unit are beautifully written. The impact of the family’s far distant past and that more immediate is laid out connecting together to fully reveal the damage perpetrated upon them. Beautifully written Wandering Stars is heartbreakingly real to the reader.

I received this book free from Net galley in return for my review. I absolutely love Tommy Orange's writing! I adored his first book. I didn't think he could get better, but he did. Definitely recommend reading this book.

This book is incredible. When I first began reading, I was struck by the searing voice. Tommy Orange does a phenomenal job of delivering a gut punch. Then, many voices tell the story and that took me aback because I was not expecting more points of view and they are genius. I am glad this book exists and can't wait to read what comes next!!

Many thanks for the complimentary ARC kindly provided by NetGalley and the author/publisher.

Trying to figure out if I missed something here. Unfortunately this one isn’t for me.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!