Blue, who was given up for adoption, travels to Oklahoma in an attempt to learn about her family, only to return to Oakland as the powwow’s coordinator.

Others, like Edwin Black and Orvil Red Feather, view the gathering as a way to connect with ancestry and, in Edwin’s case, to meet his father for the first time. Tony Loneman and Octavio Gomez see the powwow as an opportunity to pay off drug debts via a brazen robbery. Bouncing between voices and points of view, Orange introduces 12 characters, their plotlines hinging on things like 3-D–printed handguns and VR-controlled drones. * Starred Review */ Orange’s commanding debut chronicles contemporary Native Americans in Oakland, as their lives collide in the days leading up to the city’s inaugural Big Oakland Powwow. Bostrom, Annie (Reviewed ) (Booklist, vol 114, number 17, p64). Engrossing at its most granular, in characters’ thoughts and fleeting moments, There There introduces an exciting voice. While anticipation of the powwow provides a baseline of suspense, the path Orange lights through these and his novel’s many other stories thrills on its own. In his thirties, with his white mother’s blessing, Edwin reaches out to the Native father he never met. With grant support, Dene endeavors to complete the oral-history project his deceased uncle couldn’t, recording the stories of Indians living in Oakland. The land is everywhere or nowhere.” Opal recalls occupying Alcatraz as a child with her family today she raises her sister’s grandchildren as her own after their unspeakable loss. Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. Creative interludes from an omniscient narrator describe, for example, the names of First Nations people or what it means to be an Urban Indian: “We ride buses, trains, and cars across, over, and under concrete plains. Some have been working on the event for months some will sneak in with only good intentions, while others are plotting to steal the sizable cash prizes. * Starred Review */ The at-first disconnected characters from whose perspectives Orange voices his symphonic debut are united by the upcoming Big Oakland Powwow.

There there author