Wandering Stars

Starred review from December 18, 2023
Orange follows up his PEN/Hemingway-winning There There with a stirring portrait of the fractured but resilient Bear Shield-Red Feather family in the wake of the Oakland powwow shooting that closed out the previous book. The sequel is wider in scope, beginning with stories of the family’s ancestors before catching up to the present. Those ancestors include Jude Star, who barely survives the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in what is now Colorado as a youth and is sent to a prison in St. Augustine, Fla., where he’s forced to learn English and read the Bible. Jude later works as a farmhand in Oklahoma and raises his son Charles, who is sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. As a young man in the early 1900s, Charles drifts into San Francisco, where he becomes addicted to morphine while contending with the trauma of forced assimilation and unspecified abuse at Carlisle (“There is something deeper down, doing its dark work on him some further forgotten thing, but what is it? His life is about knowing it is there but not ever wanting to see it”). In the present, high school freshman Orvil Red Feather recovers at home in Oakland after being struck by a stray bullet during the powwow. Like Charles, he becomes addicted to opiates and struggles to connect with his cultural identity after his grandmother neglects to share details about their Cheyenne heritage. With incandescent prose and precise insights, Orange mines the gaps in his characters’ memories and finds meaning in the stories of their lives. This devastating narrative confirms Orange’s essential place in the canon of Native American literature. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi, Inc.

Starred review from February 1, 2025

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

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2025

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.

Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.