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Extract: Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

There There

A searing and potent debut, following a multigenerational cast of characters destined to meet violence in their hometown. A novel about contemporary America from a bold new Native American voice.

Discover Tommy Orange’s searing debut novel, following a multi-generational cast of characters as they gather for the Big Oakland Powwow. 
 
'A thunderclap' Marlon James 
'Astonishing' Margaret Atwood, via Twitter 
'Pure soaring beauty' Colm Tóibín 
 
Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and hoping to reconnect with her estranged family. That's why she is there. Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle's death, while Edwin is looking for his true father and Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance. 
 
All of them are connected by bonds they may not yet understand. All of them are here for the celebration that is the Big Oakland Powwow. But Tony Loneman is also there. 
And Tony has come to the Powow with darker intentions. 
 
** Shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award ** 
 
'An exhilarating, polyphonic debut novel... Dazzling' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Lyrical and playful, shaking and shimmering with energy... Orange creates beauty out of tragedy' Guardian 
 
'Bold and engrossing... Orange has got under his characters' skins, allowing them to speak for themselves' Financial Times

How do you rewrite the story of a people? This question shapes Tommy Orange’s sorrowful, beautiful debut novel . . . There There itself is a kind of dance. Even in its tragic details, it is lyrical and playful, shaking and shimmering with energy. The novel dips into the tiniest personal details and sweeps across history. Orange creates beauty out of tragedy.

[A] bold and engrossing debut… [Orange] has got under his characters’ skins, allowing them to speak for themselves… This is a powerful novel of pain and possibility

A magnificent achievement… Orange has created a remarkable work, and I have little doubt that he will be ranked in the pantheon of 21st century American novelists

It is optimism that lingers after finishing the book. Fragile and flawed though this hope might be, it remains moving and powerful, just like the rest of Orange’s impressive achievement

Compelling and affecting… It’s a searing, haunting read – all the way to its violent, intense climax

Mr Orange's sparkling debut is not merely a literary triumph but a cultural and political one, too. It is a work of defiance and recovery

One of the most dazzling openings I have read this year . . . [An] exhilarating, polyphonic debut novel

Articulated bluntly and beautifully by Orange, it’s magnificent, bold, educational and forthright. It’s something of a masterpiece

There There drops on us like a thunderclap; the big, booming, explosive sound of 21st century literature finally announcing itself. Essential.

Coming very soon: There There, by Tommy Orange. Gripping deep dive into urban #indigenous community: astonishing literary début!

Welcome to a brilliant and generous artist who has already enlarged the landscape of American fiction. There There is a comic vision haunted by profound sadness. Tommy Orange is a new writer with an old heart.

There There is a propulsive, groundbreaking novel, polyphonic and multigenerational, weaving together an array of contemporary Native American voices into a singularly dynamic and original meta-narrative about violence and recovery, about family and loss, about identity and power.

There, There is an urgent, invigorating, absolutely vital book by a novelist with more raw virtuosic talent than any young writer I've come across in a long, long time. Maybe ever. Tommy Orange is a stylist with substance, a showboater with a deeply moral compass. I want to call him heir to Gertrude Stein by way of George Saunders, but he is even more original than that. This book will make your heart swell.

It’s practically Shakespearean. But there’s sharp humour and spiky energy too in this bold, distinctive debut

These are stories that need to be heard. Tommy Orange is a writer who needs to be read

There There feels like a bold opening statement of intent… Orange has a way with words and a convincing eye for character. His debut has both the arresting page-turning charm of a good thriller but also the recumbent beauty of a well written literary novel

Orange’s fiery debut… There There is at once a poetic and suspenseful page-turner and a subtle condemnation of a shameful history

Exhilarating and polyphonic, with a Tarantino-esque climax, it is also a powerful meditation on history, culture and identity

There There…[is] hugely impressive, a brilliantly conceived and written first novel

[There There] tackles poverty, sexuality, identity and the decline and desire for community. It's Orange's ability to carve out such small and quiet moments in the stifled domestic strands of his complicated story and then such magnitude in the breadth of the overarching topic…which makes this novel so frightening, so hopeful and so powerful

Orange is an extremely skilful writer; each narrative voice he creates is completely distinctive and it is a wonder that this novel was written by a single writer

Tommy Orange is faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. Orange's debut novel, There There, was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, and received the 2019 American Book Award. Wandering Stars is his second book.

**The debut novel from the Booker-longlisted author of Wandering Stars** 
 
One of Barack Obama's best books of the year, the New York Times bestselling novel about contemporary America from a bold new Native American voice 
 
'A thunderclap' Marlon James 
'Astonishing' Margaret Atwood, via Twitter 
'Pure soaring beauty' Colm Tóibín 
 
Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and hoping to reconnect with her estranged family. That's why she is there. Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle's death, while Edwin is looking for his true father and Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance. 
 
All of them are connected by bonds they may not yet understand. All of them are here for the celebration that is the Big Oakland Powwow. But Tony Loneman is also there. And Tony has come to the Powow with darker intentions. 
 
** Shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award ** 
 
'An exhilarating, polyphonic debut novel... Dazzling' 
Daily Telegraph 
 
'Lyrical and playful, shaking and shimmering with energy... Orange creates beauty out of tragedy' 
Guardian 
 
'Bold and engrossing... Orange has got under his characters' skins, allowing them to speak for themselves' 
Financial Times 
 
A New York Times Top 10 Best Book 2018 
An Oprah Magazine Top 15 Best Book 2018 
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019 
Winner of the Writer's Center First Novel Award 2018

Tommy Orange

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

[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

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

Among the tragedy that is foreshadowed throughout, there is also redemption and humanity. It's a stunning book

Dua Lipa, Service95 Bookclub Pick March 2025

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

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

A multilayered, blisteringly honest novel ... [Wandering Stars] undeniably soars

Wandering Stars probes the aftermath of atrocity, seeing history and its horrors as heritable . . . The reader can see what the characters cannot

Varied and textured but also ruthlessly clear

Powerful and indelible ... A necessary story for everyone ... Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you

Morgan Talty, best selling author of Night of the Living Rez

Hold this novel to your heart because [it] is that magnificent

Richard Van Camp, author of The Moon of Letting Go

[Orange brings] both impressive historical sweep and touching domestic intimacy to an account of a Native American family over two centuries

Tremendous… [Wandering Stars is] unforgettable, often devastating… I love its kaleidoscopic sensibility, its big heart, anger and audaciousness

A transcendent novel about one family’s intergenerational pain and grief… Written with the adept skill of an archivist and heart of a poet, this novel is truly expansive… evening in moments of deep crisis, Orange holds space for humour and fierce love

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.

Tommy Orange

Praise for Wandering Stars

A revelation

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

[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 re ...

A revelation

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

[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 re ...

A revelation

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

[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 re ...

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Extract: Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

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