Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

The author is part Arapaho and part Cherokee and these are the people who populate his novels. This book is almost a companion to There There, his first bool. It centers around Orvil Red Feather, who was hit by a bullet while dancing at the event. It also tells the story of Orvil’s younger brothers Loother and Lony; their great-aunt Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, in whose care they have been since losing their drug-addicted mother to suicide; and Jacquie Red Feather, Opal’s half-sister and the boys’ estranged “real grandma”, a recovering alcoholic. The novel’s first sections belong not to these people but to their ancestors, beginning with Jude Star, a survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre and then ease into the present day. It is hard to describe why this style is so effective, but it is. His first book was good, and this is even better. The central question is what happens to people when the things they inherit from their forebears are overwhelmingly the bad stuff – wounds and torments, ill luck, curses and injurious predilections? What kind of life is possible after genocide and colonization? Good questions that are well answered.