Amazing. A dense, challenging read that is mainly a character study that packs a big wollop. I love his writing and get lost in it for pages, despite the lack of true action or much dialogue. This is a study of Native American life as seen through the eyes of those who lived it and their descendants. We see the many atrocities they suffer from their view, told alternatively in first and third person. This is a follow-up to There There but I honestly had forgotten those characters and this stands alone just fine.
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wow what a book. I feel Tommy Orange really has showcased his talent in the construction and storytelling shown in this book. We follow characters from There There, which felt special to be able to spend time with them again. But we also go back in time to earlier generations of this family and learn of their lives and stories as well.

This story was heavy, and leaves the reader feeling quite heavy after the final page has been turned. This mirrors the themes Orange is tackling and the weight the characters feel. Beautifully done.

This book is full of so much information. I did not do any research and didn’t realize there was another book by this author. I did not feel lost while reading this book and it reads as a stand-alone. However, there are many characters in the book and I had to keep referencing the family tree in the beginning of the book.

It is a very powerful, heavy book. There are multiple point of views and the book spans multiple generations, beginning with the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. This book is filled with gun violence, mental health issues, alcoholism, drug addiction and the trauma of indigenous people. I really enjoyed this book for the most part, it is beautifully written. Each chapter is told like it’s own little story and from a different point of view. I found that whose point of view was not always clear. And the chapters are very very long. Overall, a great read!

Wandering Stars is a beautiful blend of past and present. Tommy Orange weaves the stories of eight different people to address the very real ramifications that colonization has had on the indigenous peoples. This story inspires many feelings: anger, frustration, heartbreak, resilience, and hope. One of the characters, Orvil (first introduced in There There) had a big impact on me. His journey after the events of There There broke my heart but also made view addiction in a whole new light. Tommy is honest in showing the reader the truth around addiction but makes sure to never forget the person underneath. He shows grace and kindness to Orvil and Simple’s the reader to view this problem with grace and understanding. Tommy Orange is so talented and I hope to read more of his work in the future. Wandering Stars was a great follow up to There There and a book I’ll think about and have with me for a long time. Definitely recommend 4.25⭐️

A well written book that is a continuation of his previous work. All his books are a very good look at native Americans in the present times

Wandering Stars was DENSE and emotionally heavy. It's written really well and engaging and heartbreaking.

However, proceed with caution as I believe you need to be emotionally ready to read it. It's an important book, but you have to be prepared for it.

3.5 stars rounded up.

Is this an important story told by an important voice in Indigenous literature today? Absolutely. I think the theme of generational trauma and the effects of that deep-rooted trauma on Indigenous families are needed conversations that should be written about. And I think Orange does a great job in Wandering Stars.

I just found this to be hard to engage with, unfortunately. And I understand the writing styles differing to better separate the characters, but it was difficult to follow Jude Star's more meandering thoughts and that was the first person we interact with.

If you are someone who is triggered by addiction in its various forms, this will be a novel to steer clear from. However, I do think this is a great follow up to There There, and the commentary within these pages is fundamentally important.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the advanced reader copy. This title published February 27, 2024.

The events of There, There are bookended by those in this staggering book by Tommy Orange. Wandering Stars takes the reader through several generations of the Cheyenne ancestors of Orvil Red Feather's family. From the Sand Creek Massacre to beyond the COVID pandemic, the family is plagued by ethnic persecution, addiction, and a constant search for belonging in a nation that is determined to undermine them.

I finished Wandering Stars.

Tommy Orange’s writing is excellent. There is a slight change in how he writes for each character and I was able to distinguish who was narrating each chapter- sometimes before it was even clarified.

The first part of the three parts was EXCELLENT. The history and connections was my favorite part of this book.
The second part is where I got annoyed by the introduction of a non family character. The third part - I was emotionally sad for the characters but also for a generation and a culture.

Wandering Stars is a story told across multiple generations, detailing both the trauma and resilience in the family lineage. The first third of the book was informative and interesting but at times felt a bit incohesive. Once the story of Orvil, Lony, Loother, Opal, and Jacquie began, the themes of addiction, family, and identity began to shine through more. Orange writes with such beautiful prose and I appreciate how he creates space for his characters to reflect on what they’ve learned and how it’s not only impacted them, but their family around them as well.

This book is both a prequel and sequel to “There, There” which I haven’t had the chance to read yet, but I definitely will add to my list. All in all, this book is heavy in many ways, but speaks to so many important lessons on identity and overcoming struggle. I hope that many get the chance to read this story.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

Tommy Orange can write multiple points of view in a truly unparalleled manner. Beginning with a man who has gone mute after escaping the Sand Creek Massacre, each character's perspective is unique and wholly their own. Despite the years that lapse between vignettes, each character's presence carries from one descendant to the next in a way that illuminates the way that trauma is inherited.

As a fan of There There, I was delighted to not only get to know their ancestors but to have a chance to revisit Orvil, Opal, Jacquie, Lony, and Loother. When we return to the modern-day Readfeather family, each character is reckoning with the aftermath of the events of There There. The spectrum of emotion they each experience is both heartbreaking and palpable. Lony, the youngest member of the family, has a particularly devastating way of dealing with his trauma that feels so true to both his age and way of seeing the world.

If you're a fan of historical fiction and character studies, you can't miss Wandering Stars!

A multigenerational look at belonging, identity, and family through the lens of colonization, addiction, and generational trauma on the Indigenous communities in the U.S. Set mostly in modern-day Oakland, the land of the Ohlone tribe and a follow up to Orange's There There, his writing is as rich and all-encompassing as ever. I highlighted elite paragraphs of prose dripping with beauty and pain.

I most loved being back with the characters, particularly Opal Bearshield as she fiercely loves her family and 3 grandkids: Orvil, Lony, and Loother Redfeather. As well as their true grandma and Opal's sister, Jacque Redfeather as she worked through alcoholism. This book, also, at parts spans centuries in their family line of Cheyenne ancestors: a family that survives the Sand Creek Massacre, boarding schools, alcoholism and addiction.

This is not a light read but it is well worth its emotional depth and a must read for anyone who wants to read about the harsh survival of "Native Americans".

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC.

When I first started reading this book, I was given factual information about what Jude Star and his people had to go through during the white invasion and sending the children to "schools" to reform them and make them lose their true identity. I was so shocked and horrified and felt a sense of loss for people I have never met, even though the story is fictional, this story will move you and educate you and make you feel. Once we go down the next generations within the Star family line, we see how each family member is unique and yet go through the same struggles of battling addiction or depression. Sharing a passion for music and dancing and ultimately just trying to get by.

I was so moved and wanted to comfort all the strong mommas and females in this story. The characters felt so relatable despite having an identity crises I could never fully understand, I just wanted more of the story. Truly an inspirational piece of poetry, the novel read like music at times, flowed so well and I found myself reading it out loud to truly appreciate the magical aspects.

Please read this one, you will NOT regret it! All opinions expressed are my own and thank you so much to NetGalley and Tommy Orange for the ARC.

This is a one-of-a-kind book. It’s both a prequel and a sequel, the first part being the history of one family prior to the events in Orange’s first book, and the second part picking up the story and continuing to present day. The book starts with the narration of Jude Star, a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, and leads us, through the voices of his descendants, to the place where There, There left off, and then continuing with the story of Orvil Red Feather, who survived a shooting at an Oakland powwow. Some of the chapters are in first person, some are in third person, and there is even one chapter in second person, each bringing a new perspective on the relationship between Native America and White America.

I should say that I did not read Orange’s first book, There,There, and since several other reviewers have mentioned it as a necessary companion to Wandering Stars, I wondered if there was something essential I was missing, as the prequel part of the book was very slow and confusing to me. Once we got into Orvil’s story, I was able to latch on. The last part of the story was both tragic and hopeful, and I came out of it admiring Orange’s outstanding literary skill.

Although much of the book deals with atrocities dealt by Whites - massacres, forced education whose philosophy was “kill the Indian, save the man,” and incarceration for the crime of being Indian, I was amazed that this was not a book about blaming White America for the plight of the Indian. The characters all dealt with their situations by doing what made sense to them. One character is able to justify his cutting habit when he learns that Cherokees historically cut themselves (I was not able to verify the truth of this), others become addicted to various substances, others leave home. That’s the tragic part; the hopeful part is that they all found a way to move forward.

I can’t give the book 5 stars because I had such a hard time with the prequel section, but for the sheer strength of the writing, it deserves every bit of 4 starts. Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for my opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed There There and was excited to receive an ARC of Wandering Stars. As with There There we visit with multiple characters, but this time it's set farther back in history learning more about the atrocities white settlers enacted upon Native Americans. This subject needs to be covered in American public schools. I'm almost fifty years old and it wasn't until about five years ago that I learned about the Indian Schools in this country and Canada forced the native people to attend. Ripping children from their families in the name of "civilizing" them. Tommy Orange shines a light on this and more in Wandering Stars. While you don't need to read There There prior to picking up Wandering Stars I would recommend it. Both books will give you more knowledge than any school textbook ever did about the Native Americans.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

Let's just start off that this book will be in everyone's top ten of 2024. Tommy Orange's follow up to There There is a book that uses history and family lineage to make it a story worth spending time with. The story takes place after the Sand Creek Massacre where you meet you generations of a family and it's troubled past. It almost feels like dominoes as you're reading it. One story is told and the falls onto the next character. It's truly shows how insignificant we all our. Our present is important to us but dissolves into a past for another. Presently in our country we tend to put horrible things in our past to stories that showed maybe we weren't so bad. Think Thanksgiving! How America made an indiginous group of people be sidelined for their own benefit is hard to look at for most people. What Tommy orange does beautifully is for us to explore the past and realize we need to acknowledge our past so we don't repeat it. It's sometimes hard to read what Ameria did the Indiginous population but we must and I thank writers like Tommy Orange and others to force us to look at the truth. Read this book! Thank you to #knopf and #netgalley for the arc

Wandering Stars is more than a sequel to There There, it's a multi-generational tale of life, keeping on and keeping on, and the sort of generational trauma that seeps into your genes and your sons and their daughters and their sons. It's a three-part story (then, now, future) and it's rough but in a powerful sort of way. There are a lot of messages packed into this just over 300 page book that making a list wouldn't really do it the justice it deserves because everything is so entwined with each other. It's identity, not only to our race and culture and genetic background (specifically in one character's case) and relationships, but to ourselves as individuals in a world that's both built to single us out as singular entities and also strives at the same time to box us into labels and treat us as those assumed communities while little by little taking our 'communities' from us by building more roads and less public transit and the realness of how easy it is to slip into addiction especially coupled with trauma and how it is always part of you... all in Tommy Orange's really beautiful prose-y run on sentence style of writing.

I have a fondness for books set in areas I'm familiar with so that was one of the things that got me interested in There There to start with, and Wandering Sons keeps the theme of building on things I knew but not intimately, really giving life to the much varied parts of Oakland (and the castle-prison in Florida, and the plains of the midwest, etc). Additionally, I appreciated how real life this felt with the boys' interests as being boys in the late 2010s and the very Bay Area feel of the dialogue for the Youths.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf for the ARC! I really liked this.

This is a difficult book to read. The book highlights the long-term impacts of massacres, dislocation and forced assimilation on generations of Native Americans in the U.S. Almost every character is searching for identity and a sense of belonging that were difficult to attain in multiple generations. There’s so much sadness, addiction, hopelessness, aloneness as they struggle in the process. The cycle seemed endless but I have hope as the book ended. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book was very well written but brutal too. I was very invested in the story right from the start and found it moving all the way through.

Wandering Stars is the newest novel from Tommy Orange. Set in the town of Oakland, California, it seeks to explain the plight and invisibility of Native Americans in the present day.

It is marketed as a sequel to There, There but it is also a prequel. Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, and it made real sense to me. Orange does an incredible job of painting and creating a premise—the mistreatment and cruelty towards Native Americans sets the stage for generational trauma, where the main character later in the story carries an invisibility weight— he constantly thinks of why his family can’t get it together and why does his family always have to suffer.

He doesn’t always have the answers, but I appreciate his need to understand where he comes from. There is such beauty in the way Orange writes that gives a voice and brightness to the characters. It is a very worthwhile read.

The beauty in the present-day story is about Orvil and his addiction to opioids after his accident in There, There. His invisibility as a Native American leads to loneliness and despair, and eventually drug use and addiction. He is indigenous without nature, a country, and a tribe. The only connection to his community is his family, yet because he is young and immature, he squanders that away in the place of distractions and relief.

The addiction story was paralleled to Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I do not mind— we need to read more stories about addiction and recovery, and I am especially glad that the opioid crisis is getting more attention.

This is a must read book for its subject matter, social commentary, and history.