Book Club for Adults: Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage and is a devastating indictment of America's war on its own people. 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, 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. Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family. Tommy Orange is an American novelist and writer from Oakland, California and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Wandering Stars is his second novel, which was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. It spans generations, tracing a family's history from the Sand Creek Massacre to modern-day struggles. Join us at Sam Gary library for an afternoon discussion of this tender and wondrous book! Free copies of the book will be available for pick up at Sam Gary Branch starting November 1. The library has copies available in the following formats: 24 standard books 3 large type books 5 playaways eBooks Audio eBooks Indigenous Peoples' Heritage Month observance.