3.5*
Tommy Orange has a very poetic style of prose which makes for beautiful writing. The story starts with Jude Star at the Sandy Creek Massacre of 1824 and moves on to follow Charles Star and his time in the Carlisle Indian school. I really liked this first third of the novel which educated me on key historical Native American events.

The story then shifts to Orvil Red Feather from Orange’s acclaimed first novel, There There, and the aftermath of the mass shooting at the powwow. The transition felt like two different novels, but I understand his aim at showing how prior generational trauma continues to influence the modern Native American experience. This novel was a little slower than There There but delved more into the characters of Opal, Orvil, and his brothers, which I appreciated.

Overall, this was beautifully written, heartbreaking, informative, and was a satisfying sequel to There There.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for an advanced copy.

Set in two time frames and places, Colorado in 1864 and Oakland, California in 2018, this story explores the way Native Americans were treated and the effect it had on the generations that followed.

This begins, more or less, with 1864’s Sand Creek Massacre when Star is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, and made to learn to speak English, as well as being forced to become a Christian and leave his culture, forget his history, and his life before. Later on, his son is made to endure the same treatment by the same man who tortured his father. His only relief comes from another young student, Opal Viola, who has dreams of a future where they will be able to live a life free from this hell.

2018, set in Oakland, California, Opal is struggling to keep her family from falling apart following a shooting that shook their family, almost losing her nephew, Orvil. He awakes in the hospital, and soon becomes obsessed, following the news of other school shootings. As his emotional trauma eats away at him, he is given more prescriptions, and soon needs them to get through the hours of the day.

This is a relatively dark story overall, although it is beautifully written, it is at times gutting to read, and it does leave quite an impact. As a multi-generational story, it covers so many important topics that are still relevant today. A story that feels true in its depiction of the impact of the horrific ways in which ‘others’ are treated.



Pub Date: 27 Feb 2024


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf

reallhy good book. i feel like i might have gotten even more out of it had i read his previous book, but this one was still spectacular. thanks for the arc.

I didn’t realize that I should have read There There first. This book continues the stories shown in the first book. However I still enjoyed this story! Tommy Orange has a way with words and had my heart and throat in his hands. I will definitely be picking up the other story now.

I had mixed thoughts about There, There. So I was curious to see what Tommy Orange would do for his sophomore effort. Again, I’m of a mixed mind. The story is beautifully written. And there were multiple phrases that made me stop and think. I was highlighting massive sections of the book. But it feels like a scattergun approach, snippets of stories rather than a rock solid plot. The problem is I tend to like more cohesion, more plot development. Beginning in 1864 with the Sand Creek Massacre, it follows generations until it reaches Orvil Red Feather, from There, There. But it’s not necessary to have read There, There. Things do become more cohesive in the second half, as the book concentrates on the most recent three generations of the family.
It’s a story of various addictions, shootings, tribulations, religions. Each generation suffers from the sins of the past. We hear from multiple characters, including General Pratt who ran the prison and founded The Carlisle Indian School. It’s about finding one’s identity. And I can’t fault the character development. Orange gives us an in depth look of Opal, Orvil and Lony. But so much of the book concentrated on getting high which I just struggled with. I would say if you liked There, There, you will like this book. If you weren’t a big fan of it, steer clear of this one.
My thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for an advance copy of this book.

This book explores one Native family's family tree from the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through to a shooting (and its aftermath) of one of the main characters now in modern day Oakland. This book picks up where There There left off, but I don't think you would need to read that one before understanding this one. The first half of the book--the chapters dealing with massacre and the school--felt a bit more removed to me. I found myself having to flip back to the family tree often because of all the differing points of view. And, I almost wish Orange had done two separate books as the two parts were a bit disjointed. But maybe that was the point, because so much of indigenous history is disjointed and disrupted.

Things really picked up for me in the second half after Orvil wakes up in the hospital having been shot at a powwow. The tales of the brothers and Orvil's friend Sean that follow truly hit so many emotions (saddening, exhausting, frustrating, tragic and painful) but there is also joy and humor and love between the family. I do think one of the brother's story, Loother's, could have been a bit more developed. As the middle child, he seemed to get lost in the middle. Orvil's story definitely gets the most room to breathe, but it was Lony's story that really was heartbreaking to me. Something about that final chapter really pulled at every heartstring. It is what took this book from 3.5 to 4 stars.

"Hearing is holy and if you have the chance to not have to carry something alone, with people you love, it should be honored, the opportunity, it should be honored, and you all got selfish about it, you all got scared it was gonna be bigger than our love and then it was."

"I knew the way you talked about me. A dreamer. I get it. Everyone thinks kids don't get what a world is, what this world is. But we feel it all. We want nothing more than to make-believe belief can be enough, and when we realize it isn't, when you make kids believe belief isn't enough, we take it all in under hooded eyes."

Content warnings: addiction and overdose, assault, child abuse, forced adoption, loss of culture, shooting of a child, cancer, depression, self-harm

Unfortunately, I couldn't get through this book. While I appreciated the historical and cultural significance, i didn't read Tommy Orange's first book, "There, There", and found it very difficult to mesh with the writing style and had a hard time following the characters and their back stories. It seems like I would have to either adapt to the writing style and/or read the first book to be able to read this book, and this book seems to be marketed as standalone.

Beautifully written. The storytelling and description were insanely gorgeous. I felt like I was there in every scene with the character with every event and conversation.

This a rich story that feels intimate while also spanning generations.
My favorite perspective was Victoria Bear Shield in chapter twelve. It reminded me of Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony - which is to say it was moving, lyrical, and unforgettable.

Wandering Stars covers a wide range of issues including incarceration, residential schools, addiction, gun violence, and inter-racial adoption. The way traumas linger through families is highlighted without feeling forced.

Highly recommend - I believe to be a step above Orange's There, There.

This beautiful, heart-breaking sequel to THERE,THERE picks up with the family featured in the earlier book--Jacquie Redfeather, Opal, Orville, Loother, and Lony., as they struggle with the aftermath of Orville's shooting. The point of view changes among them, as well as including a number of their ancestors and how they arrived at the physical and emotional place that they have reached. All of them want the best for each other, yet their approaches don't always work the way they expect, and the consequences are often painful for everybody. The changing point of view is sometimes confusing, but the end result is so much greater than the sum of the individual threads. While this can be a difficult read, it is very much worth reading about how urban Native Americans deal with the crappy hand they have been dealt--and more than survive.

Having previously read There There by Tommy Orange, I was excited to pick up his new novel, Wandering Stars. While this could be read independently, it is best read after There There as several characters and plot lines carry through. As with There There, this is not an easy read. In There There, we followed characters who were impacted by a shooting at a PowWow and Wandering Stars picks that up and travels back in time to demonstrate the long history of violence against Native Americans. We follow three generations of a family as they live through the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and move forward in time, culminating with the shooting that takes place in present time.

What is most amazing is how well Orange depicts the multi-generational trauma within both a family and a people, the commitment to move forward with enough hope for the future while never truly escaping the past. Several characters struggle with addiction, which is itself an outcome of the shooting and the physical pain it imparted.

I continue to be impressed with Tommy Orange as a new author and look forward to seeing what he writes next!

First a big thank you to Net Galley for the DRC of “Wandering Stars”.

I’m almost at a loss on how to describe this beauty of a book. It is clear Tommy Orange has done it again! No sophomore slump for Mr. Orange. Orange’s writing is masterful. He is oh so effective in getting his point across. From page one he pulls you right in as he further educates his readers on the atrocities perpetrated on the indigenous peoples. From there he proceeds to show what leads to addiction in families living with generational trauma. Each chapter is a quick look into the descendant’s lives, the traumas, the addictions, the challenges they each face.

Orange starts the book off with character Jude Star remembering his experience in the 1864 Colorado Sand Creek Massacre. We proceed to follow him and his descendants down to “There There” characters Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, Jacquie Red Feather and Orvil Red Feather in present day Oakland, CA.

“Wandering Stars” is not an easy read, one that might, rather should make you uncomfortable at the continual injustices our Native population endure daily.

I will surely be sitting with it, letting it sink in, absorbing the powerful story line.

This book was a bit of a challenge for me to get through as it spanned many generations. In terms of providing a connective path between them, it accomplished quite a lot and was very comprehensive. The writing style didn't agree with me, in that it didn't provide enough momentum between the generations and I had to urge myself to keep reading. There are parts where the writing and character development is beautiful though, so I bet others will have an easier time with this than I did.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC! Wandering Stars continues the story (or stories) that began in There, There. We follow the line from Star, a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre down each generation down to Orvil and his brothers and the impact of the shooting. There are interconnected, constellation stories scattered throughout the narrative as well, but the core of the book is injustice, loss, recollection, healing and recovery. It's as beautiful and lyrical as There, There with the same deep emotional impact.

My bookish new year is off to a great start with Tommy Orange's highly anticipated follow up to "There There"!
"Wandering Stars" absolutely lives up to the well deserved hype. It's more than just a sequel. We get a prequel story giving us the origins of the family roots, and moves beyond the events of "There There". There is a lot of heartbreaking and quite frankly infuriating events in this family's history, and they are so resilient. What Orange does best with giving us a big cast of characters is making sure they each have a distinctive voice and get their moment to shine. Nobody is lost in the shuffle here.
Was I prepared for the trajectories these characters took? Absolutely not. Was it the follow up we needed? One hundred percent. The thing we readers often don't get was achieved with this novel...resolution.
This releases at the end of February, so you all have time to read "There There" if you haven't already done so before this hits the shelves. I highly encourage it!

Tommy Orange is a treasure. His writing has a way of making you feel exactly what his characters are going through while opening your eyes to the true plight of Native Americans. While Wandering Stars is technically a sequel to his outrageous debut There There, this second novel attempts so much more than the first's direct narrative did (ever so well, in my opinion.

Wandering Stars is an epic family saga that takes our well-known characters Orvil Red Feather and Opal Bear Shield and pushes back several generations to see where their inherited trauma may have been born. We spend a bit of time with Orvil's great-great grandfather Jude Star, who escapes the Sand Creek Massacre only to wander America until he's captured and sent to Indian school in Florida. His son, Charles Star, is left alone at a young age and also goes to Indian school before escaping west to Oakland. Then we meet to the two generations before Orvil's before catching up with him in the aftermath of the pow-wow shooting.

The lion's share of the story is how Orvil is coping as he heals from his wound, which is to say, he isn't, really. I don't want to go into any further detail on the story, but here is where we can see all the damage outlined in the prior generations play out alongside Orvil's very real current traumas. Overall, I really loved this take on the family and how the treatment of Native Americans throughout history is very much affecting those living today. It's heartbreaking yet inspiring to watch individuals struggle and persist despite all they are up against day to day.

Thank you to Tommy Orange for this beautiful story, and to Alfred A Knopf and Net Galley for the ARC. I can't recommend enough that we continue to read and support stories of this caliber to continue to better understand each other.

This book kick-started my heart and other insides for the 2024 reading year. The story was told from the perspective of one family and the discovery of its origins seemingly passed down through dreams and voices. Tommy Orange's prose through the first third of this book was mesmorizing, jumping sometimes fairly quickly from perspective to perspective, following the bloodline to where Orange's first book appeared to abruptly end. We got to know Orvil and his siblings better, and I have to say that I preferred this second book to There, There. The second installment is powerful and incredibly painful, much like our collective history in this country. Even so, the message is clear: do you know who used to live on the land you are living on now?

I received an e-arc from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't love this one, but I think it's a mismatch for me as a reader, and I can imagine other people enjoying it.

On the positive side, it's a quick read on a poignant topic. That's really hard to do, especially when the history you're working with is so heavy. Orange did a superb job in striking a balance with narration, especially over such a sweeping breadth of time.

Yet sometimes I found the prose a bit too vague when I wanted specificity. It's very possible that readers like myself who haven't read There There won't connect with the stories in this book as strongly as those who have. Wandering Stars seems more like a continuation of that novel than I originally imagined. I say stories, because to me this reads more like a collection of connected short stories than a novel. Some people love that. I am not one of those people.

Still, I hope this book finds its audience. Maybe you will like the things I didn't.

This book does a great job illustrating how generation trauma affects a family over time. And the consequences of it. A backdoor sequel to "There, There," - trauma is the root of addiction and you see its effects in the novel as well.

I was so happy to see a follow up to There, There - a book that shocked me by the suddenness of the ending. Wandering Stars both picks up where we left off - with Opal, Jacquie, Orvil, Loother and Lony after the events of the powwow - and takes us back to trace their family through generations.

The historical sections - which were about a third of the book - quickly traced the family from the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado through prisons and residential schools that forced Native folks to assimilate. I wish this section of the book had lasted longer and had more detail - it was a story I’ve never seen told before and told really well.

Once we return to the modern contingent of the family, we see the effect of trauma play out in as many ways as there are characters. We see the choices and impacts of addiction, and how addiction can feel like not a choice at all. Characters throughout both sections make choices that make you want to jump into the story to stop them, they’re that bad. And usually you can see their why, see what made them choose their path. It’s a tough read and a good read.

I loved Opal. I think she will stick with me the most.

Wandering Stars mixes awful, realistic, depressing events and character development with just the smallest bit of hope.