Wandering Stars: A novel (Unabridged)
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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 bethe 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
“Tommy Orange is a spectacular writer. That’s something you should have already heard,” says George Stroumboulopoulos about his newest book club pick. “This is storytelling that grips you from the very beginning. And it doesn’t relent, period. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve read all year.” A sequel of sorts to Tommy Orange’s astonishing debut novel, There There, Wandering Stars spins a compelling family drama across multiple generations, mixing historical fiction with plainspoken poetry and some very personal stories. In the 1860s, Jude Star survives the Sand Creek Massacre—where the U.S. Army killed hundreds of Native Americans—only to be shipped to a Florida prison. There, a villainous young guard named Richard Henry Pratt systematically forces the ways of white men on Star’s people. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is demeaned and abused at a school founded by Pratt. In the present day, Jude and Charles’ descendants are still struggling with racism, generational trauma, and addiction. Orange achieves a gorgeous, organic, and lyrical flow of language throughout this powerful novel, and the audiobook’s nine narrators capture it beautifully while adding depth and texture to Orange’s vibrant cast of characters. Wandering Stars doesn’t shy away from depicting the horrors Native Americans have experienced, but across the generations, it never stops celebrating these characters’ indomitable spirits. Despite being fiction, Wandering Stars provides many harsh history lessons—but the story kept us intensely absorbed.