I truly loved There There and admire this one at least as much. I’ve now read my favorite book for the year.
It begins with the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, a surprise attack by the US army on a peaceable Native American encampment in southeastern Colorado. Orange brings this and subsequent policies and events to life with characters, beginning with Jude Star, a child who barely escaped that massacre. As I read the book, I consulted the family tree which continued to some of the characters who appeared first in There There and then this book. The broad sweep of attacks against Native Americans the author recounts in this book is breathtaking. Bringing people to life who suffered from those attacks and policies breaks your heart.
The fictional Jude Star is one of those sent to Ft. Marion in St. Augustine for imprisonment; Richard Henry Pratt, an historical figure, ran that prison. He is known for the phrase “Kill the Indian, save the man” and he introduced English language classes both there and later at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to force assimilation for Native Americans.
I was particularly struck by the richness of the narrative throughout, and one example of this is Jude’s description of his encounter with a camel while riding on horseback in Oklahoma. Earlier he mentions someone who won a race, not with a horse, but with “a camel he found wandering the deserts of Texas, which the U.S. Army had brought over from Saudi Arabia during the Civil War, then set free with the war was over.” In his encounter with the frightening beast, it spit at him, then he saw “the camel running off with the clothes and the bleached white bones of a man long since dead hanging from the back of it.”
This inclusion of an almost unbelievable part of the history of the West was especially interesting to me as I had learned about it in Téa Obreht’s novel Inland that includes a fictionalized account of the dead rider of the camel, and reference to Hi Jolly, a historical figure from Syria who managed the camels and is buried in Arizona.
Charles Star, son of Jude and Hannah, suffered at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. In describing his life, the author says “Assimilation was one of the words they used for Indians becoming white in order to survive, in order that they might not be killed for being Indians.” Laudanum made Charles forget much, but not that memory of the deep past.
The author changes the point of view for telling different parts of the lives of the characters, as well as different generations. His storytelling always seems natural and organic not, as I have observed in some cases, like an exercise for students. And so we come to Orvil, Lony, and Loother, the teenage boys I loved so who went to the climactic event in There There, the powwow. Orvil was badly injured by a gunshot at the powwow and we live through the repercussions of that for him, the brothers, their grandmother and great aunt.
Somehow Tommy Orange both tells us directly what was done to eliminate Indians beginning with the 1864 massacre to the present day and personified that through the characters he created. As he did in There There, he gives full voice to them, so we have an understanding of why they do as they do.
Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars, Alfred A. Knopf, 2024, 315 pages (I read the Kindle version). Available at the public library.