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In Wandering Stars, Tommy Orange Writes a New Secret History
The author’s second novel, after the dazzling There There, follows family members who are inheriting more than they know.
With a narrative that begins in the 1800s, the book shows us that addiction recurs through generations of Orvil’s family — along with many other things: freckles, musical ability, bullets, a habit of making rubber-band balls, and the parts of Cheyenne belief and history that outlast the U.S. government’s brutal efforts to assimilate Native Americans. The novel begins in 1864 with a young man named Bird waking up from a bad dream to the sound of cannon fire and gunshots: Hundreds of U.S. Army cavalrymen are descending on his Cheyenne and Arapaho camp in what will eventually be known as the Sand Creek Massacre. Pratt takes away the prisoners’ blankets and clothes, replacing them with military uniforms so they can become “wolves of the U.S. Army.” Bird, who soon adopts the name Jude Star, learns to read and write by studying the Bible, which he finds strange and important.
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