News of the World: Paulette Jiles

Since I'm in two book clubs, I often read books from someone else's list. It's worth it to me to be part of a community of readers, even if my reading selections are not solely my own. In fact, I make some wonderful discoveries that way. This week has been one of those serendipitous reading experiences as I read Paulette Jiles' newest novel News of the World. When I stopped in Parnassus to browse titles, one of my favorite bookstore employees Nathan told me that this had been the favorite of one of the publishing company representatives who had spent some time working with them in the store.

Since most of my reading started late at night, I got off to a slow start with this one, but then suddenly Jiles had me hooked, and I found myself reading late into the night, knowing my alarm would be sounding at 5:30 a.m.

The protagonist Captain Kidd is a Civil War veteran, now in his seventies, living in a quite uncivilized Texas, where the political division reminds me of--writes and encourages them to join him. Circumstances have also forced him to close his printing business, so he makes a paltry living going from small town to small town, renting a hall, and reading selections from newspapers around the world, charging a dime a listener.

As the story opens, he's approached by a freighter who has a ten-year-old white girl who was kidnapped four years before by the Kiowa who killed her family. She's been ransomed, but the freighter, a black man, knows he can't risk traveling with the girl to her German aunt and uncle, so he convinces Kidd to return the girl.

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Jiles takes the reader along town after town as Kidd, whom the girl calls "Kep-dun" faces double challenges: finding a way to communicate with the girl he calls Johanna and avoiding the threat of Indians and outlaws along their route. The girl, who considers herself Kiowa, fights his attempts to civilize her, but the two warm to one another during their forced time together.

Over the course of the narrative, Jiles develops these two characters and the mixed bag of good and bad folk they encounter without hokey tricks or stereotypes. The setting is described so clearly, I felt as though I had traveled all the way from Wichita Falls to the girl's first home. 

Even the author's notes at the end sent me turning back through the book, retracing my steps--and those of the "Kep-dun" and "Cho-henna"--back and forth across Texas. I have my book club to thank for the delightful journey.

News of the World: Paulette Jiles