Audiobook

English language

Published Feb. 24, 2024 by Books on Tape.

4 stars (3 reviews)

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 …

7 editions

reviewed Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Wandering Stars

4 stars

Wandering Stars is a novel that covers several generations of the family that featured in his first novel, There, There, although it is not necessary to have read that book to understand this one. The bulk of Wandering Stars focuses on the present generation, but the early chapters make explicit the fact that the later characters are still grappling with the appalling legacy of how Native Americans have been treated over centuries. Orange moves among different perspectives with ease, with some characters speaking directly to the reader in first person, and other chapters provided by an omniscient narrator. Orange has a gift for capturing small yet meaningful interactions between people, and writing eloquently how we support each other (not always willingly, not always perfectly), through grief, addiction, and loss.

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rated it

4 stars

Subjects

  • American literature
  • nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2024-03-17
  • New York Times bestseller

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