Wandering Stars

By: Tommy Orange

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Paperback | 10 June 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
336 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.6 x 12.9 x 2.3

Paperback

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The heart-rending story of a Native American community told through the generations, longlisted for the Booker Prize

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 an evangelical prison guard, who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial school, dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture and identity.

Years later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to this school, where he is brutalised by the same man. Together with fellow student Opal Viola, Charles envisions a future far away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Full of poetry music, rage and love, Wandering Stars, looks to the past and future across the generations of the Bear Shield and Red Feather family, finding their way through displacement and pain, towards home and hope.

About the Author

Tommy Orange was born and raised in Oakland, California. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Tommy currently teaches at the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. There There is his first novel.

Industry Reviews

A revelation - New York Times

An emotionally incandescent and structurally riveting second novel… Orange’s work feels, to me, as vital as air - Guardian

[Wandering Stars] weaves a tapestry of trauma down the decades… Ultimately, the turns their stories take…are about healing, not catastrophe…marrying eye-opening historical re-creation with gritty social realism - Observer

A sweeping, centuries-spanning, intergenerational novel concerned with history, legacy and family… Tommy Orange confronts difficult subjects in mellifluous prose… He shows that storytelling is an intoxicant in itself, as powerful in its way as any substance - Times Literary Supplement

A centuries-spanning epic of a Native family that manages to feel profoundly intimate - Vulture

Outstanding . . . A dazzling work of literary fiction ... A novel about family, loss, history and addiction - Boston Globe

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