The sequel to his 2018 masterpiece, There There, Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars is an honest look at generational trauma, addiction, and perseverance.
Following the success of his 2018 debut novel There There, Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange revives his cast of characters for his sequel, Wandering Stars. Published February 27, 2024, by Knopf, Wandering Stars travels back a few generations within the Bear Shield family to trace the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864.
“It was a piece of history that I became fascinated with,” Orange said in an interview with NPR. “One of the books I was reading, there was a list of prisoners. One of the characters’ names was Star and another one was Bear Shield. That’s one of the families from There There. I realized I was going to try to write this family line.”
This coincidental discovery led to the introduction of Star, a young Cheyenne child and survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre. Wandering Stars follows Star as he is brought to Fort Marion Prison Castle, run by Richard Henry Pratt, who would later go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Bent on erasing Star’s Indigenous culture, Pratt embodies the harsh treatment that has traumatized generations of Indigenous people.
Wandering Stars then finds its way back to present day, picking up immediately after the tragic events that ended Orange’s first book. As the characters wrestle with the traumatic experience they have all endured, addiction, PTSD, and escapism abound within the family, asking the reader whether stopping the cycle of trauma is possible.
Orange writes with a bold honesty when depicting the brutality of addiction, pulling from his own experiences. “My life has been shaped and mangled by addiction,” he told NPR. “I’ve had my own struggles, and everybody in my family has, so it’s just been a big part of my life.” However grim this reality is, Orange threads hope through each character’s narrative, pointing toward a path of healing.
Orange shocked the world with his honest representation of modern Indigenous struggles in There There, earning him the American Book Award in 2018. His 2024 return is a beacon of light for Indigenous representation in literature.
“It’s an exciting time right now for representation,” he told NPR. “Most people in this country don’t understand what it’s like to never be seen, to never be represented in popular culture, or if you are, it’s a misrepresentation.”
(PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Penguin Random House)
Wandering Stars is available for purchase in bookstores and online now.
HEADER IMAGE: Courtesy Elena Seibert
