Lyrical. Poetic. I can’t stop thinking about this book! The story begins in 1864 at the Sand Creek Massacre, and traces one family’s bloodline through the pandemic. The accurate historical elements of Indian boarding schools, prisons, and abuse add a level of interest (and heartbreak).

Deeply moving and heartfelt, if you’re looking for a book on identity or addiction, family or loss, then this book is for you. The pacing, tone, and point of view are brilliant. Shout out to #NetGalley for the ARC! #Wandering Stars

Very well written follow up to There There. It was nice to revisit characters and see how the y fared after the pow wow.

First off, I want to thank Knopf and NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for my review. Wandering Stars is Tommy Orange’s follow up to his first novel, There, There. Looking back, I probably would have preferred to read the debut first, but regardless, I feel as though I was able to understand the stories in Wandering Stars without the background from There, There.

Yes, stories (plural)! It is split into three parts. Part one being historical fiction dating back to the early 1900s, part two taking place around 2018, and a very short part three taking place in the future. The characters are all related to one another; many share the same names. It’s not an easy read by any means, but I do enjoy the writing style of the author.

I’m giving Wandering Stars a 3.5/5 star review. The author writes beautifully, he’s very talented and definitely did his research when completing his novel. I did find myself distracted at times and skipping details in order to find out what happens next.

Many thanks to Netgalley for providing me with advance copy ♥️

Wandering Stars, a heart-wrenching collection of short stories by Tommy Orange, left me tearful and reflective. As a Native American author, Orange masterfully weaves together tales that resonated with my soul. His poignant portrayal of indigenous characters’ raw emotions and profound connections to their heritage echoed my own struggles with cultural identity.

I felt seen and heard in these pages, reliving my own journey of grappling with the tension between cultural traditions and modernity’s allure. The characters’ heart-wrenching struggles with disconnection and their triumphant rediscovery of ancestral roots mirrored my own story, leaving me emotionally raw.

Orange’s poetic prose captures the complex essence of urban indigenous life, shattering stereotypes and redefining what it means to be indigenous today. His writing resonated with me, evoking a deep sense of belonging and connection to my heritage.

Wandering Stars is more than a book – it’s a shared experience, a testament to indigenous resilience, and a reminder of our shared humanity. It’s a powerful tribute to the diversity and strength of indigenous communities, offering hope and inspiration to those seeking a deeper understanding of their cultural heritage.

Through Wandering Stars, Orange reminds us that storytelling is a powerful tool for healing, connection, and growth. His writing has left an indelible mark on my heart, inspiring me to embrace my heritage with renewed pride and to continue sharing my story with the world.

Wandering Stars is a heartfelt portrayal of the indigenous experience, an emotional journey that challenges and inspires. It’s a testament to the power of storytelling and the resilience of indigenous communities, leaving a lasting impact on readers like me.

Tommy Orange is masterful with language. This eye-opening read is a must! With its sharp poignant prose and unforgettable characters, it’s sure to be a top read of 2024!

This felt like a very important book with a great historical background. But jumping through so many generations made it hard to hold my attention. But valuable reading!

I received an early copy through Netgalley but all opinions are my own.

I was excited to see this book by this author. Certainly not a happy tale, but a well-written and compelling one. His previous book was great as well.

I really appreciate the free copy for review!

This plot is the genelogy of an Indian/Native American family. The description of the very difficult life they endoured was riviting. It's easy to understand how the resulting family issues occur.

Wandering Stars tells the separate stories of the Star family separately. Each character has a chance to relate their story to the reader, but not to the generation that comes after them. I found the early stories to be the most interesting and compelling. Each generation grapples with what being Native means for them in the context of a white United States and each generation faces different challenges and repercussions from the trauma of earlier generations. I did not read Tommy Orange's earlier work, although I meant to. I think this is a book that will be around for awhile and it does a good job at looking at many of the impacts of being a Native American today.

A must read for anyone trying to understand current problems in Native American communities. A powerful look at the generational trauma that exists for many Indigenous families. This book gives readers an intimate view into addiction, feelings of isolation in a colonized world and fear of never being enough. It explores why love is often not enough to break through the trauma.

Tommy Orange always writes with such raw, intense emotion and sometimes that feels daunting, but with this book I was enraptured. I couldn't put it down even if I wanted to.

The emotions I felt reading Wandering Stars were intense and every word felt like it left a deeper cut in my heart -- but i'm better for it.

Addiction is a beast of a thing and to write about it in such a poetic but real way is a talent and I look forward to reading this again when it officially releases. Incredible work, truly. I'm recovering from sobbing as I write this

Beautiful and tragic story that follows the characters from the previous book "There, There" and goes back generations to paint a picture of the generational trauma and addiction that affect the Star family and continue to the present time. The book is hard to read at times and Orange has a very unique voice in that his writing is poetic in nature but also remote. Tommy Orange is an important voice in the Native American experience and it is clear he has done extensive research into the facts that are woven into this fictional story. This is a storyteller telling a tale through various viewpoints and types of narration. In this book we get stories told in first, second and third narration, but it all comes together like a layered mosaic, to give us a picture of how this family struggles and survives.

The book begins in 1864 with the Sand Creek Massacre, then follows young Charles Star as he is enrolled in the Carlisle School, a school where Indian students were stripped of everything that they knew about being Native American and beaten and starved into submission. Within this framework, each generation has original characters who have their own strengths and weaknesses as they struggle with addiction, births and deaths and trying to maintain a sense of belonging. The last chapters circle back to Orville from "There, There" who is recovering from his injuries after being shot and who battles to find his place in the world along with his younger brothers and grandmothers. A great book and I look forward to reading more fiction from this talented author. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this ARC in exchange for a review.

So-I think it helps to have read his first book-THERE THERE-a superb read. The first part of the read follows a survivor of the Sand Creek massacre and his life and lineage. To me this was the most powerful part of the book. The second part follows his descendants living in Oakland, each using a different method for coping with being s modern day Native American.
It was for me just okay-not nearly as powerful as his first book,and at times in the second half too wordy and not cohesive enough( except for one chapter that you’ll have to read to discover).
In summary -a good effort but not as powerful as his first book.

4.5, rounding up because the prose is so, so good. Every couple of pages I was just knocked down by a paragraph and had to take a few minutes to reread and breathe. This is the story of the Red Feather family from 1875 to the near future, continuing and deepening their narrative from There There and landing hard on the three young brothers Orvil, Loother, and Lony. It's unbearably sad and at times depressing, except that they do manage to hang on to each other and to their shared, damned past throughout the worst. Substance addiction is a major theme, handled with incredible sad clarity and compassion, as is the related problem of dealing with the weight of a personal and generational history that's just too much for anyone to bear sanely.

You'll probably want to reread or at least skim There There before starting this one, as there are a few important events in the first book that are frequently referred to here.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

I think Tommy Orange and I just do not mesh. I felt like the only person in 2019 who read and did not like THERE THERE, but because I study contemporary Indigenous fiction, I wanted to like Orange's new book very badly. Unfortunately, I found this just as messy and inconsistent as his debut. This does not seem to be marketed as a sequel to THERE THERE, but it definitely is. I had to skim through the older book to remember certain plot points and character relationships. Orange's debut felt like the worst kind of kitchen-sink novel to me, and I felt the same about this one. It is a story about addiction, Native boarding schools, PTSD, Sand Creek, liberalism, and brotherhood all at once, far too much to be properly elaborated on in a single text. On top of being a sequel, the character work and structure of this was just all over the place. From a large-scale textual level to line-by-line prose level, I found this novel very frustrating. If you were a massive fan of THERE THERE, I think you will appreciate this continuation of the story. I just could not be converted into a Tommy Orange fan with this new novel.

I can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on this one. If Tommy Orange knows how to do one thing it’s how to make the most tragic story sound so beautiful. This is a follow up to There There (one of my favorite books) and it deals so well with the history of Native Americans in the United States and the hardships they’ve faced time and time again — from massacres to reform schools and how that trauma has been passed down from generation to generation. I really couldn’t put this one down and I just kept reading sentences over and over again because it was so good. My favorite sentence here: “We’ll have strong legs, keen awareness, and big hearts, keeping ourselves and each other going like we belong to that one-day distant future, when we can look back and say this is how we made it, despite everything.” I really enjoyed the historical aspect of this and how Tommy blended in key historical events into the narrative to show they altered the course of the characters lives. I wish in the second half we would've delved a bit more into Loother's story but overall I really enjoyed this book!

What I liked: the opening of the book and its depiction of the enormous, horrendous suffering and abuse of the Native Indian people, their animals and way of life; and the maintenance of these themes of loss, pain, yearning and searching the whole book through
What worked less well for me: the baggy shapelessness of much of the rest, apart from the final section. Circular, often low on narrative content, this tracing of multiple characters, while telling and effective, also remained static and repetitive.
Nevertheless, I was aware right the way through of the visceral strength of the book’s intent, and the immediacy of the writing. Orange’s work is important, memorable. It made its mark.

4.5 stars rounded up. Author Tommy Orange writes in such a way that you are’t merely reading about the characters as a passive observer - you are the characters and feel the weight of their emotions in the kernel of your soul. His voice, cadence, and rhythm is uniquely his and reads like the stories our elders tell us or like the heavy moments exchanged between friends when we let down our walls. This novel captures a much-needed diverse intergenerational portrait of what it means to be Native in America and reminds us that the people who survived an ongoing genocide are still living among us and grappling with the outcomes.

Whereas the first book in the series, There There, focused on the story of the modern, urban children, Wondering Stars goes back, following the family tree of those in the first book. It follows from the beginnings of colonization’s erasure, assimilation, and violence on the family as they experience the Sand Creek Massacre, the Fort Marion Prison Castle, and the Carlisle Indian School. This added history interplays with the modern characters from the first novel as they each individually grapple with the outcome of the Powwow shooting. As the story progresses, the years on years of trauma inflicted on the family feels ceaseless and you come away with a greater understanding of how our country never atoned for its wrongs against its first inhabitants, even while we continue to perpetuate them.

While each character’s individual story is gripping in their own right, Tommy Orange - master crafter that he is - weaves a tapestry from each that captures the breadth of the Native experience in a way that is more tragically poignant than the the sum of the individual stories. In this way, I think it can be categorized alongside Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

This novel is perfect for anyone seeking out Native voices, those interested in introspective and emotional writing, and those interested in important societal questions. The writing gets into stream of consciousness at times, but give yourself the chance to hold on and give it a chance and I think you’ll find something beautiful, tragic, and unique in forging its own path.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Someone told me to read “There, There” first. I liked the writing style of chapter 1, so I’m going to come back to this one after reading his first book. (And that said, I don't feel like I need to read the first to get into this one.)

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.

"Wandering Stars" by Tommy Orange, a masterful follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-finalist novel "There There," weaves a powerful narrative that extends across the past and future, tracing the legacies of historical atrocities and their impact on generations of a family.

The story begins in Colorado in 1864, where Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle. Here, he is subjected to the efforts of Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard, to erase his Native identity through the imposition of English language and Christianity. Pratt will later establish the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, dedicated to eradicating Native history and culture. A generation later, Star's son Charles becomes a victim of this institution, suffering under the harsh treatment of the man who once guarded his father.

The narrative then shifts to Oakland in 2018, where Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is struggling to hold her family together after her nephew Orvil survives a shooting. Orvil, grappling with the trauma, becomes obsessed with school shootings, while his brother Lony copes with PTSD through self-harm and rituals connecting him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal, seeking healing for her family, explores Ceremony and peyote.

Tommy Orange's storytelling is described as piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage. "Wandering Stars" stands as a devastating indictment of America's historical and ongoing mistreatment of its own people, offering a profound exploration of identity, trauma, and the intergenerational impacts of systemic violence.