NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

"For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you.” —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts. - (Findaway World Llc)

Library Journal Reviews

Orange's second novel orbits the landscape from his unflinching debut, There There, mining Orvil Red Feather's lineage, beginning with his great-great-great-grandfather Jude Star, who narrowly escapes the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and is later imprisoned in Florida. The trauma inherited from these earliest relatives—notably, the bitter legacy of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School—reverberates throughout Orvil's unsettled life, which strains under the weight of addiction and grief. An ensemble of 10 talented narrators join their voices in an alternating chorus as they read the characters' memories, experiences, and thoughts. Standout performances include MacLeod Andrews as Carlisle School founder Richard Henry Pratt, whose weathered voice reveals deep-seated racism masquerading as benevolence. Blackfeet narrator Shaun Taylor-Corbett's depiction of Orvil is layered, capturing his descent into worsening addiction and also his cautious path toward recovery. Oglala Lakota/Mohawk narrator Charley Flyte provides a steady, sorrowful monologue directed toward her unborn daughter, and Blackfeet/Cherokee narrator Curtis Michael Holland brings out the prickly momentum in Sean Price's search for belonging. VERDICT A devastating account of forced assimilation, the search for cultural identity, and the ravages of addiction, told through the shifting perspectives of Orange's layered, wounded characters. An essential purchase.—Sarah Hashimoto

Library Journal Reviews

An ensemble of nine talented narrators join their voices in a stunning chorus, tracing the lives of Orvil Red Feather's descendants as they contend with the devastating legacy of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and the weight of substance-use disorder and grief. In their performance of Orange's second novel, the narrators provide a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Indigenous people navigating intergenerational trauma, forced assimilation, and the fraught search for cultural identity.