Tommy Orange’s family saga, Wandering Stars, picks up where his 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist, There There, left off. In the wake of a 2018 shooting, high-school freshman Orvil Red Feather struggles to make sense of the violence he has endured. To better understand what Orvil is up against, Orange takes us back to 1864 to tell the story of Jude Star, the boy’s great-great-great-grandfather. As a teen, Jude barely survived the Sand Creek Massacre, in which more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho people were estimated to have been killed by the U.S. Army in Colorado. From there, Jude was sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history and culture, an experience that left him and his descendants struggling to understand their Indian identity. By tracing the generational trauma of the fictional Bear Shield-Red Feather family, Orange, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, explores the effects addiction, displacement, and persecution have had on an entire community.
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