The Book

In There There, Tommy Orange traces the intersecting lives of 12 characters from Native communities whose voices and perspectives converge and conflict and reach across generations. Patterns of chance and circumstance draw each character towards the first Big Oakland Powwow: 14-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the first time; Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind; Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Together, they tell of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

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