This is a one-of-a-kind book. It’s both a prequel and a sequel, the first part being the history of one family prior to the events in Orange’s first book, and the second part picking up the story and continuing to present day. The book starts with the narration of Jude Star, a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, and leads us, through the voices of his descendants, to the place where There, There left off, and then continuing with the story of Orvil Red Feather, who survived a shooting at an Oakland powwow. Some of the chapters are in first person, some are in third person, and there is even one chapter in second person, each bringing a new perspective on the relationship between Native America and White America.

I should say that I did not read Orange’s first book, There,There, and since several other reviewers have mentioned it as a necessary companion to Wandering Stars, I wondered if there was something essential I was missing, as the prequel part of the book was very slow and confusing to me. Once we got into Orvil’s story, I was able to latch on. The last part of the story was both tragic and hopeful, and I came out of it admiring Orange’s outstanding literary skill.

Although much of the book deals with atrocities dealt by Whites - massacres, forced education whose philosophy was “kill the Indian, save the man,” and incarceration for the crime of being Indian, I was amazed that this was not a book about blaming White America for the plight of the Indian. The characters all dealt with their situations by doing what made sense to them. One character is able to justify his cutting habit when he learns that Cherokees historically cut themselves (I was not able to verify the truth of this), others become addicted to various substances, others leave home. That’s the tragic part; the hopeful part is that they all found a way to move forward.

I can’t give the book 5 stars because I had such a hard time with the prequel section, but for the sheer strength of the writing, it deserves every bit of 4 starts. Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for my opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed There There and was excited to receive an ARC of Wandering Stars. As with There There we visit with multiple characters, but this time it's set farther back in history learning more about the atrocities white settlers enacted upon Native Americans. This subject needs to be covered in American public schools. I'm almost fifty years old and it wasn't until about five years ago that I learned about the Indian Schools in this country and Canada forced the native people to attend. Ripping children from their families in the name of "civilizing" them. Tommy Orange shines a light on this and more in Wandering Stars. While you don't need to read There There prior to picking up Wandering Stars I would recommend it. Both books will give you more knowledge than any school textbook ever did about the Native Americans.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

Let's just start off that this book will be in everyone's top ten of 2024. Tommy Orange's follow up to There There is a book that uses history and family lineage to make it a story worth spending time with. The story takes place after the Sand Creek Massacre where you meet you generations of a family and it's troubled past. It almost feels like dominoes as you're reading it. One story is told and the falls onto the next character. It's truly shows how insignificant we all our. Our present is important to us but dissolves into a past for another. Presently in our country we tend to put horrible things in our past to stories that showed maybe we weren't so bad. Think Thanksgiving! How America made an indiginous group of people be sidelined for their own benefit is hard to look at for most people. What Tommy orange does beautifully is for us to explore the past and realize we need to acknowledge our past so we don't repeat it. It's sometimes hard to read what Ameria did the Indiginous population but we must and I thank writers like Tommy Orange and others to force us to look at the truth. Read this book! Thank you to #knopf and #netgalley for the arc

Wandering Stars is more than a sequel to There There, it's a multi-generational tale of life, keeping on and keeping on, and the sort of generational trauma that seeps into your genes and your sons and their daughters and their sons. It's a three-part story (then, now, future) and it's rough but in a powerful sort of way. There are a lot of messages packed into this just over 300 page book that making a list wouldn't really do it the justice it deserves because everything is so entwined with each other. It's identity, not only to our race and culture and genetic background (specifically in one character's case) and relationships, but to ourselves as individuals in a world that's both built to single us out as singular entities and also strives at the same time to box us into labels and treat us as those assumed communities while little by little taking our 'communities' from us by building more roads and less public transit and the realness of how easy it is to slip into addiction especially coupled with trauma and how it is always part of you... all in Tommy Orange's really beautiful prose-y run on sentence style of writing.

I have a fondness for books set in areas I'm familiar with so that was one of the things that got me interested in There There to start with, and Wandering Sons keeps the theme of building on things I knew but not intimately, really giving life to the much varied parts of Oakland (and the castle-prison in Florida, and the plains of the midwest, etc). Additionally, I appreciated how real life this felt with the boys' interests as being boys in the late 2010s and the very Bay Area feel of the dialogue for the Youths.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf for the ARC! I really liked this.

This is a difficult book to read. The book highlights the long-term impacts of massacres, dislocation and forced assimilation on generations of Native Americans in the U.S. Almost every character is searching for identity and a sense of belonging that were difficult to attain in multiple generations. There’s so much sadness, addiction, hopelessness, aloneness as they struggle in the process. The cycle seemed endless but I have hope as the book ended. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book was very well written but brutal too. I was very invested in the story right from the start and found it moving all the way through.

Wandering Stars is the newest novel from Tommy Orange. Set in the town of Oakland, California, it seeks to explain the plight and invisibility of Native Americans in the present day.

It is marketed as a sequel to There, There but it is also a prequel. Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, and it made real sense to me. Orange does an incredible job of painting and creating a premise—the mistreatment and cruelty towards Native Americans sets the stage for generational trauma, where the main character later in the story carries an invisibility weight— he constantly thinks of why his family can’t get it together and why does his family always have to suffer.

He doesn’t always have the answers, but I appreciate his need to understand where he comes from. There is such beauty in the way Orange writes that gives a voice and brightness to the characters. It is a very worthwhile read.

The beauty in the present-day story is about Orvil and his addiction to opioids after his accident in There, There. His invisibility as a Native American leads to loneliness and despair, and eventually drug use and addiction. He is indigenous without nature, a country, and a tribe. The only connection to his community is his family, yet because he is young and immature, he squanders that away in the place of distractions and relief.

The addiction story was paralleled to Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I do not mind— we need to read more stories about addiction and recovery, and I am especially glad that the opioid crisis is getting more attention.

This is a must read book for its subject matter, social commentary, and history.

"Wandering Stars" by Tommy Orange is a haunting journey through time and the interconnected legacies of Native American history. Seamlessly weaving together past and present, Orange delivers a powerful narrative that delves into the repercussions of historical atrocities and the enduring struggle for identity and survival.

Set against the backdrop of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Orange introduces us to characters whose lives are irrevocably shaped by the brutality of colonialism and institutional violence. From Star, a young survivor of the massacre forced into assimilation at Fort Marion Prison Castle, to Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, grappling with the aftermath of her nephew's near-fatal shooting in contemporary Oakland, each character's story resonates with profound depth and emotion.

The portrayal of intergenerational trauma is particularly poignant, as Orange explores how the wounds of the past continue to reverberate through subsequent generations. Through Orvil's compulsive search for school shooting videos on YouTube and Lony's desperate attempts to reconnect with his Cheyenne heritage, Orange vividly captures the struggle to reconcile personal identity with a history marked by violence and erasure.

Orange's prose is lyrical and evocative, capturing the beauty and brutality of the landscapes his characters inhabit. His exploration of Ceremony and peyote as avenues for healing adds a spiritual dimension to the narrative, offering glimpses of hope amidst the despair.

"Wandering Stars" is a masterful follow-up to Orange's acclaimed debut, "There There." With its piercing poetry and unflinching portrayal of America's ongoing war on its indigenous peoples, this novel is a devastating indictment of historical injustices and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

In conclusion, "Wandering Stars" earns its four stars through its compelling storytelling, richly drawn characters, and profound exploration of themes of trauma, identity, and resilience. Tommy Orange has once again proven himself to be a formidable voice in contemporary literature, and this novel is sure to leave a lasting impact on readers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Receiving an advanced copy was a delightful surprise. I believe both existing fans and newcomers will find it equally enjoyable.

3/5 stars rounded up.
Like so many others, I LOVED Orange's debut There, There about "urban Indians" and their individual struggles to reach the Oklahoma pow-wow. So I was very excited to see that he had another book coming out and that it is a sort of sequel to There, There which ended rather abruptly, in my opinion.

I have mixed feelings about this offering. As always, reading Orange is a master class in writing at the sentence level. His command and control of language is beautiful and sometimes surprising. I really love his style. He's readable but also cerebral and literary.

This book is rightfully split into two parts. The first part is a sweeping and quick overview of hundreds of years of Native American history told by the ancestors of Orvil - one of the victims of the shooting at the pow-wow in There, There. It spans generations in this family. I learned a lot in this section, but it dragged for me. LOTS of telling. And the parts that he did include were cursory history of the events. I'd love to see an entire book on the Prison Castle/re-education schools in Florida where we really get inside the lives of the characters there. This entire section felt like a bulleted list of moments in Native American history instead of really getting into the nitty-gritty of these events. I'm curious about the though process behind backing up this far, just to zoom ahead and really zero in on the aftermath of the pow-wow shooting.

The second half follows several of the characters we met in There, There. This section felt disjointed to me. There were several POVs that were told in first person. Several in third person, A few even in 2nd person. And I couldn't quite understand why or even what the point was. I don't think it necessary added anything to the story to switch around like this. This section did move a bit faster with the inclusion of more dialogue, but it still felt like it was trying to do too much in a little amount of time.

Overall, this really felt like two separate books that perhaps Orange couldn't decide which direction to take his second book - or maybe didn't have enough stamina or material/ideas to make two separate books, so he smooshed them together into this one. I did like it. I did highlight a LOT of really great, inspirational, important quotes. But it just didn't hit the same way There, There did. It almost felt like Orange had some salient points he wanted to make about the Native American experience and just used the under-developed characters as a vehicle to deliver these nuggets of wisdom. I didn't feel overly invested in any of the characters. And I don't know that any of them really grew or changed that much as the story progressed.

Wandering Stars is definitely worth the read. Do I think it is going to have the lasting affects of There, There - not for this reader. But I'm glad I read it and it did make me do some more research into the historical events mentioned in the beginning.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tommy Orange, and the publisher for allowing me to read and review an Advanced Reader Copy of this novel.

- I knew Orange would break my heart with WANDERING STARS, and he sure did.
- Orange expands on the legacy of colonization and the generational traumas that stem from it, showing different ways they manifested throughout the decades.
- Orange’s writing is so gorgeous, the kind of writing that you can’t imagine being done any other way.
- I reread THERE THERE immediately before this one, and am happy to report that the anti-fat bias in the first book is almost entirely gone.
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Content warnings: Abandonment, Genocide, Grief, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Addiction, Colonisation, Death, Self harm, Alcoholism, Blood, Violence, Racism, Suicide, Mass/school shootings, Alcohol, Animal death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Cursing, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Cancer, Rape

I admit-I was not as enthralled by there, there as many other readers and reviewers, but I still wanted to give wandering stars a chance. I was so glad I did. The prose is beautiful and haunting. While the it does take a bit to get into the main plot/story, I didn’t mind because oranges words had me along for the ride. This is a multi generational tale about the Native American experience, multi-generational trauma, addiction, families, community, the past, etc. the smooth writing hides a deceptively complex plot and themes. I loved this and want to go back and re read it as I’m sure I missed many, many points my first time around. This is a book worth reading and all the many fans of there, there (and those who aren’t) will still love this.

Thanks to the publisher for providing this arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a special novel and I just ADORE Tommy's writing style. This book is told through multiple POVs, as Tommy continues to educate you through a story of the Native Americans and their brutal past. He gives us an in-depth lens through the eyes of Opal, Orvil, and Lony. It's a family saga that is well-written, hard to read sometimes (need to be in the right headspace to pick this one up), and felt gripping to its story.

My hopes for Wandering Stars were high; the reality was better. I loved it.

I reread There There before starting this ARC, and I'm so glad I did - Wandering Stars can absolutely be standalone, but it's far more powerful in context. And I love how it's not a straightforward sequel or a prequel - it's more of a wrap-around. The form is a perfect container for the stories - because the past doesn't end, it builds.

I don't always love multi-POV novels (which is maybe a function of growing up in an individualistic society that prizes a specific and familiar type of storytelling?); whatever the reason, Tommy Orange is exceptional at ensemble casts. This book is like a kaleidoscope or a mosaic composed of photographs - there's one story it tells from afar, and then you look closer. In that way, it reminded me of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.

I'm so glad the publication date is finally here; I can't wait to discuss Wandering Stars with customers at the bookstore where I work. Like There There, Wandering Stars isn't an easy book to read - I devour most books, but this is one I have to stop and sit with and process - but it's beautiful and memorable and utterly worthwhile.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

I really wanted to love it. It sounded so good and I love reading about Native Americans. I just couldn’t get into it for some reason. I even downloaded the audio to see if that would help. It’s very slow burn book. Please note that I did not finish the book so my two stars may not be an accurate assessment.

Deeply emotional and gripping prose. At parts, it felt more like linked short stories, working with different styles and voices, but the second half felt more like a novel. It's been a long time since reading THERE THERE, and I didn't remember the characters or their stories, so a bit was probably lost on me as this continues the family's stories.

I struggled with this one. The beginning provided a family tree type back ground but I felt that just as I got to know a character they were gone. Once the main story started I still struggled as the story just seemed to drag for me. Wish I liked it more but it was a struggle for me from beginning to end

A powerful multi generational story threading together the Native American experience and addiction. If you can get past Part 1 which is very difficult and sad read,, you will be rewarded with pure literary excellence. It’s well written and thought provoking. A must read and instant classic.

An amazing story of a Native American family struggling with addictions. Hard to read and will have you sobbing by the end. To say Tommy Orange has a way with words is a total understatement. I do wish I had read the previous book first though.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

"Wandering Stars" by Tommy Orange is a slow burn exploration of the intergenerational trauma inflicted upon Native American families in the wake of historical atrocities. Set in Colorado in 1864, the novel follows Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, and his son Charles, who later attends the Carlisle School. Orange weaves together the stories of these characters, highlighting the impact of colonization and forced assimilation.

Tommy Orange has an important message about the American Indian treatment and how this has affected their culture. I did read There There by Orange many years ago and I did not remember much of the story. While this is supposed to be a sequel, "Wandering Stars" can stand alone.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of "Wandering Stars" in exchange for an honest review. #NetGalley, #WanderingStars, #TommyOrange