News of the World

Jiles, Paulette. News of the World. New York: William Morrow. 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

Captain Kidd laid out the Boston Morning Journal on the lectern and began to read from the article on the Fifteenth Amendment.

He had been born in 1798 and the third war of his lifetime had ended five years ago and he hoped never to see another but now the news of the world aged him more than time itself.

Description:

In Paulette Jiles' novel News of the World I found a job I might be good at (had I been living in 1870). Civil War veteran Captain Jefferson Kidd tours the small towns of Texas armed with current issues of American and international newspapers. He rents a meeting hall, charges ten cents a head, and reads articles of interest to local townspeople hungry for news and entertainment. While there are still some anger in this southern state over the results of the Civil War, if Kidd can avoid talking about current politics he can usually make it through the presentation safely and move on to the next town.

At age seventy-one, he deserved peace like a river but apparently he wasn't going to get it at present.

But his well-ordered life is upset when his friend Britt, a freight hauler, asks him to return a ten-year-old girl to her relatives in San Antonio 600 miles away. The girl had been captured by the Kiowas five years earlier, but was recently released to the army to avoid battles with the soldiers. She spoke no English and definitely had not wanted to leave her Kiowa family. 

Kidd agrees to take her and together they start their long, dangerous trip. Johanna, (Kidd refers to her by her original name), slowly learns some English and gains trust in Kidd. Together they fight off a gang of men who want to buy Joanna for ugly purposes, but Joanna proves herself a valuable fighter when the going gets tough, even finding a unique use for the dimes Kidd had earned at his last lecture.

Throughout the journey, the two grow closer with each stop they make or person they encounter, or just as they walk and ride the miles closer to San Antonio. Kidd begins to wonder about his own life and what the best course of action would be for Johanna, a child who already had lost two families.

This is a gentle story of a hard world filled with choices, strong people, and survival. Kidd is a thinker and he contemplates what is right and wrong for Johanna as well as for himself as they face new people and the challenges of the harsh land around them. I loved the story and both of these interesting characters. Highly recommended.

Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but is must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed.

Happy reading. 

Fred

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