Publisher Description
The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout best seller There There. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.
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 Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt is an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity.
A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family whom readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre.
Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.
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“A searing study of the consequences of a genocide…Orange is gifted at elevating his characters without romanticizing them, and though the cast is smaller than in There There, the sense of history is deeper.”
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Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
About Tommy Orange
Tommy Orange is the author of There There, a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 2019 American Book Award. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He is a graduate from the MFA degree program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow.\2019 American Book Award.
About the Narrators
MacLeod Andrews is an actor, voice actor, and Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator who earned the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2018. He has starred in a number of independent short and feature films and is a member of the Rising Phoenix Repertory Company in New York City.
Alma Cuervo is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and a stage actress and singer who has also performed in film and television. She holds an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama, from which she graduated in 1976 alongside Meryl Streep. She starred in the role of Madame Morrible in the first national tour of Wicked.
Shaun Taylor-Corbett is an actor, singer, and writer. A graduate of the University of Delaware, he has television and Broadway credits, including the role of Sonny on Broadway in In the Heights. He also has off-Broadway credits including In the Heights and Altar Boyz.
James Buckley Jr. is a sports writer for children. He has written more than fifty books about sports for kids, including titles on baseball, football, NASCAR, soccer, the Olympics, and more.
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