Tommy Orange is a gifted writer and after you finish his books, the stories stay with you for a while. Having said that, I don't enjoy his books as much as I wish I did. Wandering Stars revisits many of the characters from There There and like the previous books, there are many characters and stories woven together. The book tackles heavy topics of addiction, trauma, and puts a focus on the atrocities committed against Native Americans. I would say this is an important read, but not one that I particularly enjoyed.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for this ARC.

I went into this book without reading Tommy Orange's previous book, There There. While this was a powerful read I struggled to keep the large number of characters separate. In the end, I understood how all of the characters connected and everything made sense but I do think that reading There There first would have made a difference in how I interpreted the early events in this book. Overall, it was a great read and really gave me a lot of information to reflect on.

It is hard to believe how Tommy Orange write so beautifully about such horrifying things, but here he is again. Continuing the family saga started in There There but going even further back in time, Orange describes the many past atrocities that got Opal and her family to the point in time where Orvil and Lony were involved in the latest tragedy to befall the family. While Wandering Stars is sometimes hard to read, it is also filled with hope as the family works to heal and I still adore Opal the most. A huge thank you to Knopf, NetGalley, and Tommy Orange for sharing an early ARC in exchange for my honest opinion. 4.5 stars

(Thanks @aaknopf @prhaudio #gifted.) My journey reading 𝗪𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗦 was an unusual one. I hadn’t originally read 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, so back in December decided to do so in advance of this new book. With the holiday madness, I ended up reading only 38%, putting it aside for easier books. Jump forward a couple months when I began 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴. I was immediately more engaged, but reached a point where people and events of 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 began to pop up and I regretted not finishing it. This is when things got a little crazy! I put 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 aside, downloaded 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 again (thank you @libby.app), finished it, and then finished 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
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In the end, I’m happy I went down the path I did because 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 truly is both a prequel and a sequel to Tommy Orange’s debut. Reading them in this disjointed fashion, actually had me reading the entirety of the two books pretty much in order. At this point the two stories are meshed in my mind, so my comments are really for both. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
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These stories are beautifully written, covering much of the sad history inflicted on American Indians, and the aftermath of that history still impacting their lives today. Orange shows readers the cruel massacres at Sand Creek, the theft of land, unfair imprisonments, compulsory Indian Schools and many other ways his people were forced to live lives in line with what others wanted for them. He also brings us to the nearer present with 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 following the aftermath of the events in 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. His books have a lot of characters and Orange has a lot to say, but his second book does settle into the Star family, making it less dramatic than his first, but richer in connections to its characters.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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I liked both books very much and know Orange is an author I’ll continue to follow. Personally, I’d love to see his next book tightly focused on a smaller group of characters, but no matter what I’ll read it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person.”
—Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

In the epic follow-up to Orange’s first novel, There There, Wandering Stars expands on the world of one Native American family and the effects of genocide that trickle down through generations.

Part I of Wandering Stars begins with the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and follows survivor Jude Star as white men imprison him in an institution designed to strip Native Americans of their culture and history (via horrific abuses)…

Part II picks up where There There left off: in the present-day aftermath of a mass shooting. As trauma bleeds through Jude Star’s descendants, Orange details their struggles with addiction, grief, and further alienation while highlighting the healing powers of music, family, and storytelling—especially regarding heritage and identity. But trauma is complicated, and the deepest wounds are not always visible…

Wandering Stars is the heartbreaking yet hopeful story of one of America’s bloodiest secrets, buried far too long.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this e-ARC, an important story full of heart.

Wandering Stars adds the slices of bread around There There's middle, creating a cohesive family story spanning from more than a century before the events of There There to the events following it. It begins in the past with Star after the Sandy Creek Massacre and follows his wandering, starvation, and eventual capture by Richard Henry Pratt. Mistreated and forced to assimilate by learning English and Christianity, Star found some solace in scripture that he carried on.

I enjoyed There There but found there to be too much jumping between characters for the story to really sink in. Wandering Stars contained a similarly large cast, but it was written in a way that was far more connected and easier to follow, likely because the cast was part of the same family. I enjoyed this book so much more because of that.

There were many times in this book where the past was brought up. Not only did it play a role in some of the characters learning more about themselves, but it was also mentioned a number of times that Native Americans are treated as though they are still in the past—as if they don't exist today. That is not the case, and this accentuates why this needed to be written.

I mentioned the cast already, but I loved them. I loved all of them. Each of them had such an impactful story that neither are easy to forget. Even more, Tommy Orange's prose is beautiful, but that isn't surprising. It's difficult to capture the personalities of different characters sometimes and still write such captivating prose, but he did it. I can't wait to see what he writes next.

I read There There in 2022 and I was glad to come back into the world and learn even more about our characters from their history and for after the shooting. Tommy Orange brings us beyond the stereotypes and really shows how drugs and hopelessness and being/feeling displaced is generational. Loss of identity that was forced on the native population. This book was heartbreaking and hopeful and devastating and interconnected. Read There There and then read this.

I waited for release day to listen to the audiobook as the full cast of narrators is my favorite part of this series. It helps to connect when there are so many different POVs over almost 200yrs of history. It is a powerful story that must continue to be told. We can’t just pretend none of this happened or none of it matters than where people are at today. There is a history of centuries of generational trauma. I appreciate how Tommy Orange lays it all bare for us to see.

I felt about Wandering Stars much as I did about There, There, Orange's first novel. The writing is stunning. The topics are vitally important for our understanding the Native American experience, both in the past and now. This is an important read, and I'm glad I read it for the understanding I've gained of the history and the generational trauma that has resulted. So, yes, I'm glad to have read this, but it wasn't a book I can say I enjoyed reading.

An absolute must-purchase for all libraries. It was so well-written and I could not put it down. While fiction, it gives the history of the population and their trials in a very factual manner. Tommy Orange is always on my top recommendation lists to patrons.

Thank you to @netgalley and #tommyorange for the advanced copy.

Wandering Stars by #tommyorange is a follow up to his debut novel There There. The main characters are Indigenous people living in urban Oakland, CA. This novel introduces us to and follows multi-generations of a native family originally from Oklahoma. Through the history of this family we can read the atrocities that have taken place and the trauma suffered. Family trauma as we know can lead to suffering and addiction as shown evident in this novel.

I urge readers to pick this one up! There is an audience for this book, we are out here. There are many readers like myself that want to hear these stories and find great value in them. Tommy Orange is a beautiful writer and this book is current and timely. These stories are overdue. I applaud you Tommy Orange for bringing us modern day Indigenous characters living their everyday lives. Having to deal with the aftermath of what their ancestors endured. I look forward to more!

Before I wrap this up though, can we just take a moment to appreciate this gorgeous book cover?!

What a powerfully written novel about the REAL Tribal American experience. Thank you @prhaudio for my gifted copy of Tommy Orange’s new release WANDERING STAR.

Tommy Orange is a master at writing the stream of consciousness. This novel follows multiple points of view (audio narration is great- different actors for each!) as it explores the decisions America has made for its natives, as well as the repercussions of our own decisions.

Spanning several varying lifetimes from the Carlisle School (living in PA this was additionally interesting to me) and flows through to present time, we walk with the characters through their suffering, their pain, their unending strength, and love.

I finished Wandering Stars last week and I'm still thinking about this beautiful book. When I picked this book up I didn't realize it served as both prequel and sequel to Orange's first novel There, There. I haven't read his debut novel yet and still loved the story, but I think you will probably get more from the story if you read them in publication order. We get to know a lot of different characters in Wandering Stars (I was so incredibly grateful for the included family tree), but the ones I wanted more information for have their stories told in There, There.

This was an important and moving read. It follows the descendants of Jude Star, a Native American man who survives the Sand Creek Massacre. The story spans about 100 years and we see his descendants face the erasure of Native American culture, the relocation from Native lands, generational trauma, and the seemingly inescapable cycle of addiction. In telling this story, Orange shares the reality faced by many Indigenous families.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for a review copy. I will be going back and reading There, There in the near future.

Tommy Orange should be mandatory reading for Americans—not only for his sharp, nuanced understanding of being a modern Native American, but even more so for the beauty of his writing style. The sentences, the stories can almost feel lyrical in their unfolding and are in and of themselves a gift to read. Cannot recommend this or his other books enough.

4.5 ⭐️
Being a Bay Area resident, I love how this story traces the lineage of modern day Native American families in Oakland. Wandering Stars captures the plight of Native Americans, and uncovers how generational trauma persists long after a distressing cultural event. I loved the characters, the setting, and the interwoven plot lines.

Thank You to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange is such a stunning, complex book. It's complicated, both in story and structure, and worth every minutes a reader spends with this novel. Absolutely exquisite.

**Many thanks to NetGalley, Knopf, and Tommy Orange for an ARC of this book!**

"But surviving wasn't enough. To endure or to pass through endurance test after endurance test only ever gave you endurance test passing abilities. Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person."

The year is 1864. Star is a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, a mass execution of Cheyenne and Arapaho people during the American Indian Wars and has made it through the bloodshed, but has been relocated to Fort Marion Prison Castle. Now under the watch of Richard Henry Pratt, he is forced to put his culture and heritage aside and learn both Christianity and English. This will be the beginning of a mission for Pratt, who will later found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution whose core mission will be much the same: erase and replace Indian culture. This school will find the family several years later, when Jude's son Charles also falls victim to the prison and trapped in these unfeeling and unforgiving walls.

Charles' only solace is his friendship with a fellow inmate Opal Viola, and the bond they share is quick and effortless. They both long for a future on the outside, a world without a motto that states "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." We then jump in time to Oakland in 2018, directly after the violent pow-wow massacre that took place at the end of Orange's first book, There There, and the horrific aftermath of these events. Orvil has survived the shooting, but heads down a dangerous road when it comes to his painkillers, and his family, knee deep in their own trauma, is not much better off. Under the strain of racism, injustice, and pain, can this family band together to rail against the forces that keep them clawing and fighting for their very survival? Or will the legacy of generational trauma, pain, and degradation leave them as 'wandering stars'...forever?

There, There is nothing short of a stunning piece of literature. I remember TEARING through that book in a day or less, enraptured by the cast of characters and Orange's fluid, mesmerizing prose. The voices were SO distinct, SO real, that I felt as though I was reading a collection of journals rather than a work of fiction. So much so, that I honestly GOOGLED There There after reading it JUST to make sure it was fiction: it was just THAT good. The crescendo of action, the perfect climax, the beautiful mix of light and dark that played gently throughout the pages...there's a reason the book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Oh, and not to mention....that was Orange's DEBUT.

So it's hard to imagine a book that could live up to the sort of impossible precedent Orange laid out for well, himself, after such a jaw-dropping first novel. I went into Wandering Stars with the loftiest of hopes, the highest of expectations...and while I was still thoroughly WOWED by Orange's ability to turn a phrase...There, There this was not.

First off, Orange attempted to do something I don't think I've ever personally read in a book before: he wrote a prequel AND a sequel to There, There...and put them in the same book. This was a strange experience for me as a reader, in the sense that There, There is SO contemporary in flavor from start to finish, and the first part of THIS book essentially reads more like historical fiction...and a very specific subset of historical fiction dealing with the aforementioned battle, at that. This isn't to say this section of the book is BAD by any stretch, and it is certainly informative and provides a different level of context, but like with so many other historical fiction reads, it felt a bit dry and less emotionally driven compared to the in-your-face gut punch that began from page one of There, There. I'm not sure if being more familiar with the context of the events themselves would have been helpful, but many times I felt bogged down by the details rather than simply swept away by Orange's storytelling ability.

There's also the fact that this story works its way through a (somewhat) complex family tree, where family members are often named after one another or have multiple names, and this makes the family tree that Orange puts at the beginning of the book nothing short of essential. Especially for someone whose memory can get a bit muddled when there are LOTS of characters involved, I can't even tell you the number of times I flipped back and forth to remember who was talking or who was related to who and how....it can be a LOT. Always worthwhile, mind you, but although this is more of a personal preference, I wish the chapters were outlined with the narrator's name at the beginning of each section for reference too: sometimes we went into a new character's narration abruptly, and other times it was simply a continuation from the previous chapter, and it would have been wonderful to have a clearer distinction between the two options.

Once we got to the present day (or rather, as close as we get in the novel, from 2018 onward) things began to turn and I felt more of the flow I had been missing thus far. There was one chapter in particular (I believe narrated by Lony) that at its completion, I sat back and honestly wished I could give that single chapter TEN stars. Orange is such a gifted writer, so thoughtful and specific, prescient without coming off as high brow or arrogant, and his ability to craft a compelling sentence is top-notch. There were so many instances where if I'd had a physical copy of this book I KNOW I would have been highlighting it left and right (Or at least, adding Post-It note markers for later reference!) and as time wore on, I started to wish that the WHOLE book had read more like this last section. I know Orange had the ability to make this SEQUEL book happen and in some ways, it became a bit one note with the addiction struggles of sorts experienced by multiple characters. I did miss a bit of the pulse-pounding, adrenaline fueled rush of his first book's third act climax...but this book is more about examination and exploration of past abominations....and the ripples that still are felt, even today.

I'll leave you with an observation from one of Orange's many brilliant narrators, with a sentiment that not only applies to the long-standing struggle and pain of indigenous people, but to a longing and wanting keenly felt by humanity itself: "I think I needed to feel the bottom to know how to rise. Maybe we're all looking for our bottoms and tops in search of balance, where the loop feels just right, and like it's not just rote, not just repetition, but a beautiful echo, one so entrenching we lose ourselves in it."

May we lose ourselves in it, indeed.

4 stars

Tracy from the stacks probably puts into words much better than me on how I felt about this novel, as my feelings are very reflective of hers. The pacing was off at times and while I appreciated what the author was doing, the combined prequel and sequel did not work for me and did not feel like they really belonged together to create a cohesive story. It's very apparent that the author is talented and his prose is gorgeous, however I was left wanting more.

There, There was not a story I ever thought needed a sequel, but Tommy Orange delivers in this masterpiece. The focal point is of this story is addiction, survival and generational trauma. Trauma that can be carried whether we know about it or not. Opal said it best when she said surviving isn't living. Despite all her family has been through, they deserve to live their lives fully outside the shadow of Native American genocide and white supremacy. A difficult, but deeply moving book.

I finished Wandering Stars a few days ago and have been carrying it around inside me, turning it over and over like a handful of pebbles. There is so much going on in this book.

• First off, the stories. So many characters, so many stories, woven together like a basket in the shape of a human heart, not a Valentine's one.

• Orvil! It's a long time since I read There There, so my memories of Orvil weren't vivid, but Wandering Stars made me anxious to go back and spend more time with him.

• The whole prequel/sequel thing. I want to go back and reread Wandering Stars with There There. I want to move back and forth between the books so that I can experience the whole chronology playing out.

• Orange can write! He has a gift for individual voices that are simultaneously wise and surprising. I found myself slowing down on specific sentences because I wanted to hear them in my head in the "best" way possible—the way truest to the characters' hearts. It's been a long time since I've highlighted this many remarkable sentences while making my way through a book.

• The intelligence of all the characters: young, old, together, chaotic, inside, outside. The articulateness of the individuals Orange picks means that I found myself thinking and learning no matter who I was spending time with in any particular moment of reading the book. It's been a long time since I've highlighted this many remarkable sentences while making my way through a book.

Flat out, Wandering Stars is a remarkable piece of fiction that I know I'll return to more than once in my reading life.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.