53 pages • 1-hour read
Wandering Stars: A Novel
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Part 1, Chapters 5-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Before: 1924”
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Pratt, now in retirement, reflects on the boarding school and his subsequent regrets. Namely, he remembers that President Theodore Roosevelt did not respond to his request for more funding. Pratt feels the media did not give him the right admonitions for his work at the Carlisle Indian School, the papers instead referring to him as an “honest lunatic” for what he did at the school. Pratt compares himself to Roosevelt, assuming himself better because he did not parade Indigenous children around for a show. However, deep down, Pratt knows that he did the same thing. He receives a letter from Charles Star requesting an interview for a book, and Pratt uses his great-grandson's birth in San Francisco as an opportunity to go to Oakland and see him.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Charles can’t control his memories. He knows there is some memory deep within him, buried underneath the abuse and trauma he suffered at Carlisle. He thinks about the times he ran away from Carlisle, realizing that he had to return for food and shelter. Because Charles uses laudanum, he cannot tell the difference between his memories, his present, and his dreams. He imagines riding the train to Florida but doesn't realize it is a dream.
As the dream continues, Charles realizes everyone on the train with him is white, and he is on his way to Washington. Charles dreams that he shoots the president. Once he wakes, he realizes he is in his shack on the orchard he cares for, but he remains in an intoxicated state.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Pratt takes a train to San Francisco and thinks about his resolution to move Indigenous people toward his idea of a better future for them. He believes he did his best. When he arrives at his son's home, which he notes is immaculate, he meets his great-grandson, Richard Henry Pratt III. He feels sick upon arriving and goes to lie down, dreaming of earthquakes, though Pratt rarely dreams.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
Charles leaves his shack to carry out his plan to rob general stores. The man whose orchard he helps manage barely notices him as he passes by, as Charles usually keeps to himself, either writing or using laudanum. As Charles makes his way to the Piggly Wiggly in North Oakland, rain touches the back of his neck, and he remembers the man who grabbed him there to hold him down in the boys’ bathroom at the Carlisle Indian School. Charles gets shot while robbing the Piggly Wiggly but doesn't realize it as he runs away with a cotton sack full of money.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary
Pratt goes to find Charles at the orchard. H finds Charles, surrounded by his own blood and dead on the floor. He regrets coming, seeing Charles’s papers next to his typewriter and money all over the floor. Pratt is then hospitalized for tuberculosis. Before his death, he convinces himself that his plan was the best plan for helping Indigenous Americans. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery with an epitaph on his tombstone, attributing the gift of his headstone to his students and “other Indians."
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary
The day before Charles is killed in the robbery, he writes. He thinks about the stories of his father and his love for Opal, all the while feeling alone inside himself. He realizes he is meant to write, but that the laudanum is keeping him from accessing himself as a writer. He feels both hope and disappointment.
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary
Opal, who has stayed away from Charles for over a week because of a fight they had, comes to the shack and finds him dead. There with him is the Haven family dog, Cholly. Charles and Opal both work for members of the Haven family, and when Opal realizes she is pregnant, she hides it. She knows her child may come out with freckles or some other indication of Charles's half-white heritage and is afraid of what the Havens might think. Opal knows she must run, and she takes Charles's papers, the money, and his body with her. As Opal hides, she talks to her child in her stomach. She tells her child about Charles and how she remembers him at Carlisle, because she was there, too. She remembers they played in marching band together.
She tells her daughter about her own childhood: She was born without a name before her mother died and given the Cheyenne name Little Bird Woman. She talks to her unborn child as she gathers blackberries and hides as she tries to find a place to hang Charles's body in the trees like the Cheyenne people do. She remembers little of Cheyenne customs, but what she does remember, she tries to pass down to her child. She wants to honor Charles in his death. Cholly travels with her. She continues to tell her unborn child about following Charles out to Oakland using an outing program set up by Pratt. She tells a story of Charles playing trumpet through the night and running away from school in an act of defiance, which Opal remembers clearly and proudly.
She remembers the abuse Charles suffered and perceives his substance use disorder as a response to the trauma he carries, which she tells her child of. She finds a place to hang Charles's body and camps for four days. She feels hopeful about her future with her child, although she does not know how to give birth. She feels that she can keep on running, one day looking back with her child to see how far they made it.
Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary
Opal and Charles's child, Victoria, is born. She is raised by the Havens, learning only later in life that her mother died during childbirth. Later in her life, she befriends a woman named Jacquie, who is Ohlone, to find a way to her own heritage. Victoria learns that she was named in the middle of childbirth, wondering where her name came from and feeling angry that people call her Vicky instead of Victoria.
Her adoptive parents experience substance use disorders with alcohol and treat Victoria like a servant. Her heritage is hidden from her until after her mother's death, and one drunken night, her father tells her that she is an Indigenous American. He gives her a box of her father's things. Victoria then gets a job at a factory and gives birth to Jacquie Red Feather and Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield. Throughout her life, Victoria tries to understand her history, by reading the letters from her father. As she raises her daughters, she works endlessly and is absent for much of their lives. She takes them to Alcatraz Island during the occupation, where she tells her daughters she is dying. Jacquie is raped on the island. Before she dies, Victoria archives Charles's box at the Friendship Center in Oakland to keep for her daughters.
Part 1, Chapters 5-12 Analysis
In this section, the themes of The Impact of History, Generational Trauma, and Violence on Identity and Art and Its Transformative Power are explored primarily through Charles as he struggles with substance use disorder and a lack of separation between dreams and reality. Richard Pratt and Charles Star are also introduced with intertwining narratives. Orange uses key elements of craft to intertwine these and other narratives, including repeating phrases, images, and experiences through time. This strategy of intertwining narratives is evident in Chapters 5 through 10: As each chapter ends, strands of its story weave their way into the following chapter. For example, in Chapter Six, Charles dreams of riding on a train. Chapter 7 then opens with Pratt riding a train to San Francisco. The man who shoots Charles in the Piggly Wiggly coughs, delaying the rate at which he can get the money out and, in turn, delaying Charles long enough to get shot. When Pratt discovers Charles's body, he coughs, spitting blood into his hand because of the tuberculosis that will soon kill him. Each character’s story is interwoven with the others, echoing key details and highlighting their interwoven identities, which is partly the result of The Impact of History, Generational Trauma, and Violence on Identity. Though Pratt was the source of Charles’s suffering, ordering violence against him also impacted Pratt, as he questions the ethics of his behavior in his later years and is haunted by the memories. While he determines that he did the best he could, his preoccupation with memories of the school shows that he is still bound to it, unable to escape his past.
Meanwhile, Charles can never escape the violence and abuse he endured at Carlisle, spending most of his life trying to bury the rage and pain that he feels. Pratt dies thinking only of the people he tried to help, afraid to admit that he really did it for power and position. However, both characters are inextricably linked because of the boarding school and the horrors it created, and their deaths are also linked due to their proximity, like death was contagious. Their stories are also starkly contrasted, as Pratt dies with his family, who live in an immaculate home built on generational wealth. Charles dies alone in a shack after trying to steal enough money to protect his family, and his pregnant wife, Opal, drags his body into the wilderness and tries to remember enough of her heritage to bury him properly, further exploring The Impact of History, Generational Trauma, and Violence on Identity and Land, Place, and Belonging. Opal’s last rites to Charles demonstrate a longing for identity and heritage, and her taking him into the wilderness highlights that they have no place they belong to, but the wilderness is more honorable a place to die than his shack, as well as being better suited to customs she can’t fully remember because of their forced schooling at Carlisle.
Orange uses shifts in perspective and narration to build a multiplicity of voices, highlighting their interconnectedness through each shift. The first four chapters of the novel are told from the first-person perspective, with Jude narrating the events. Then, Charles and Pratt are introduced by a third-person narrator. When Opal is introduced, the voice switches back to first-person and then adopts second-person when Victoria is introduced. This strategy creates intimacy and distance for and between the characters. For example, Opal’s monologue in Chapter 11 is deeply intimate as she speaks to her unborn child, but—just as Charles is detached from his own memories in many ways—using a third-person perspective to tell his story creates a distance similar to the distance he feels within himself, his “[b]ody a metaphor [...] the world made against itself, split in half everywhere with its good and evil, love and hate, day and night, dream and waking, heaven and hell, Indians and Men” (71). The proximity of each character to each other, and to themselves, is mirrored for the reader through a switch in voice throughout the narrative.
As each generation endures severe trauma, they are further removed from themselves. Charles, for example, does not recognize himself and cannot find where he belongs in the story of his family or in the world, signaling the theme of Land, Place, and Belonging. Opal tells her daughter that she “does not know the ways of [her] people” (81), though she gives as much as she can to Charles and her unborn child. Victoria, who knows nothing of her heritage and history for most of her life, is also raised by white people and does not understand why she does not look like the family that she knows. Victoria’s hidden identity makes her life feel “impossible” because she “will be an Indian and an American and a woman and a human wanting to belong to what being human means” (103). Such distance, ambiguity, and dishonesty create a sense of longing, or hunger, which the characters in Wandering Stars feel in their own personal ways, again highlighting the theme of Land, Place, and Belonging. As each character searches for a place to belong, however, Charles's words find their way to each of them either through his letters or his wisdom. For example, Victoria reads his writing, and though she does not understand everything he says, she knows she must preserve them for her daughters. Because she does this, Opal will eventually read the words and find hope, demonstrating the power of stories and Art and Its Transformative Power.
The section ending with Victoria taking her daughters to Alcatraz Island to tell them she is dying further speaks to the interconnectedness of the characters, particularly in death. The occupation of Alcatraz Island was a protest for Indigenous American rights, and Victoria bringing her daughters, Jacquie Red Feather and Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, to Alcatraz Island demonstrates Victoria’s longing to connect with her family’s heritage. While she was raised away from her true heritage, her daughters are brought into one of the largest Indigenous American protests in US history, emphasizing its importance. However, Jacquie’s rape speaks to the cycle of violence that feels inescapable, no matter the choices the characters make.
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