News of the World

This book has gotten rave reviews and a movie featuring Tom Hanks. Not too shabby. News of the World is beautifully written and features a sweet relationship between an unlikely pair.

This novella follows Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (cool name!), a 70-year-old man who has the interesting job of traveling around Texas reading the news from far and wide to the locals who are desperate for news and often illiterate. During this tumultuous time in post-Civil War Texas when lawlessness is rampant, Kidd is asked to transport 10-year-old Johanna to her aunt and uncle. Johanna was abducted years before by the Kiowa people after her family was brutally murdered. Remembering no English or the culture she was originally taken from, these two unlikely characters embark on a long and dangerous journey south.

This is a meandering kind of read. Jiles provides beautiful descriptions of the land, tidbits of humour and illustrates the danger of the time and the intricacies of warring cultures. But it was the growing bond between Kidd and Johanna was what made this book for me. Their relationship was sweet, particularly when she called him 'Kep-dun'. *heart melt* But I think I would have enjoyed the book more if Johanna's perspective - her challenges, her fears and her experiences with the Kiowa - were included.

This is a simple, heartwarming story about an interesting pair of characters, and I can't put my finger on exactly why it didn't hit me harder (the lack of quotation marks - argh! - wasn't a winning feature). I recommend reading the author's brief note at the end of the book regarding the hardships of the many children who were reintroduced into white society.

My Rating: 3.5 stars

Author: Paulette Jiles

Genre: Historical Fiction, Western

Type and Source: Trade Paperback from public library

Pages: 224

Publisher: William Morrow

First Published: March 29, 2016

Opening Line: Captain Kidd laid out the Boston Morning 

Journal on the lectern and began to read from 

the article on the Fifteenth Amendment.

Book Description from GoodReads: In the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd drifts through northern Texas, performing live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world—of the Irish pouring into New York City, of the railroad driving into the new state of Nebraska, of an eruption of Popocatépetl near Mexico City. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain once made his living as a printer, until the War Between the States took his press and everything with it. Now, at seventy-one, he enjoys the freedom of the road, even if his body aches and money is scarce.

At a stop in Wichita Falls, Captain Kidd is offered a fifty-dollar gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives near San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders viciously killed Johanna Leonberger’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as their own. Recently recovered by the U.S. Army, the ten-year-old with blue eyes and hair the color of maple sugar has once again been torn away from the only home and family she knows. The captain’s sense of duty and of compassion propels him to accept, though he knows the journey will be long and difficult.

Winding through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain, the four-hundred-mile odyssey south proves dangerous as well. A corrupt Reconstruction administration runs the state government, and anarchy and lawlessness have taken hold. The captain must watch for thieves, Comanches and Kiowas, and the federal army—and corral the wild Johanna. Small and thin, the despondent child has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the wary Johanna slowly draws closer to the man she calls “Kep-dun,” and the two lonely survivors forge a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.

But in San Antonio another hurdle awaits, one that will force this respectable man to make a terrible choice that will determine Johanna’s fate—and his own.

Unfolding in gorgeous prose, News of the World is a vivid portrait that captures a beautiful and hostile land, and a masterful exploration of the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.