Wandering Stars: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

In Oklahoma, Jude begins to read more. He feels that he could spend his whole life reading. He would never call himself a Christian, but he begins going to church, mostly out of curiosity. One day, Jude is out riding his horse and happens across bodies of killed men and overturned wagons. It seems like a robbery gone wrong. Jude takes some barrels that have fallen out of one of the wagons and stores them in his basement. He doesn’t know what’s inside. One night, he goes down and pries open a barrel with a shovel. The smell almost knocks Jude on his back. He’s seen men drunk before, white men and Native men, but he wants to know what it feels like himself. He’s surprised that, while he feels like he might vomit, he also feels like a great weight has been lifted from him.

While he’s drinking, Jude hears himself say a line from Moby Dick in English. When he wakes up the next morning, he’s amazed that, after being without a voice for so long, he can speak. He goes to talk to Bear Shield as soon as he can, but when he finds him, Jude discovers that he can no longer speak. Drinking becomes a nightly habit, but he can never recreate the experience of being able to speak. When he drinks, he’s drawn to hearing people talk about God, so he goes to a Mennonite church, which is the church closest to his allotment land. While leaving church one day, Jude trades his horse for one that looks like the one he rode away from the Sand Creek Massacre on. Jude stays away from the Mennonite church after that.

Jude starts going to a new church, where he sees a woman whom he feels like he has to meet. Each Sunday, the church performs miracles, and Jude goes up front one day and prays for his voice to return. People form a circle around Jude, praying for his voice to come back. When the pastor touches Jude’s throat, Jude yells, “Praise Jesus,” and then, “Praise the lord.” Everyone starts saying, “Hallelujah.” After that, Jude introduces himself to the woman he saw, who says her name is Hannah. The two go back to Jude’s house and drink water and whiskey, and they talk about their lives. Hannah is from Ireland and was raised by a Cherokee family after her family died in a fire. Jude feels like he “cheated” his way into regaining his voice. In a year, Jude and Hannah are married in the same church where they first met.

After marrying, Jude and Hannah try to have children but aren’t able to. Bear Shield also approaches Jude about a peyote church. Bear Shield says the ceremony helped him heal from everything he’s gone through, and Jude hopes it will do the same for him. Hannah refuses to take part. At the ceremony, Jude can’t believe what the medicine does to him; it fills him with a feeling of beauty that is replaced by violence, which starts to feel like death itself. During the terror, Jude prays for a son. In the spring, Hannah gives birth to a son. Jude then joins the police force and has been promoted to chief of police. But trouble comes when the police are told that the peyote ceremonies are illegal, and they (the police) will have to put a stop to them.