Lots of hype about this book by Paulette Jiles who is normally thought of as a poet but has also written novels. And the book is different. I’ve read so many “western” books over the years and I thnk they’ve changed so much, from Louis L’Amor to Larry McMurtry to Patrick DeWitt and now Pauletter Jiles. Even Nathanial Hawthorn’s Leatherstocking tales are Westerns of a sort – from a different era – a different West than we usually read about.
*******
News of the World
by Paulette Jiles
2016 / 224 pages
read by Grover Gardner 5h 58m
rating – 9 / literary western
*******
Anyway, in this novel of post-Civil War Texas, Captain Jefferson Kile Kidd, a 70-year old US military man who has fought in 3 wars, is a self-employed traveling news reader. He comes to a town, sets up a forum and read to his paying audience from various national newspapers His focus is on non-Texas matters. As the story opens he’s just accepted the job of transporting a 10-year old girl from Wichita Falls back to her family near San Antonio, a journey of hundreds of miles through rough and lawless terrain.
Johanna, the name Kidd gave the captured girl, was held by Kiowa Indians from the age of about six and for the last 4 years has lived with them as part of their tribe. During that time she forgot everything she knew about western ways including her name and the language, how to wear shoes, bathe and how to use eating utensils. But she’s bright and brave as well as stubborn.
As they travel the odd pair has adventures both large and small. At first Johanna tries to run away back to her Kiowa family. But she also slowly learns that the Captain is her friend and they bond.
Jiles is no stranger to novel-writing, but she’s a poet at heart and the narrative shows it. The descriptions of the Texas landscape come from the hands of a true wordsmith. This is not a page-turning thriller, but it kept me up late last night until I finished – good ending! I’ll be going on to read “Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier” by Scott Zesch which is recommended by Jiles to readers who are interested in the subject of children (any ethnicity) kidnapped by Native tribes of the Southern Plaines.
Becky's Books - 
This sounds fascinating. Can you tell us (without spoilers) how he knows where to take the girl back to, if she’s forgotten everything?
But intriguing too, because it’s not long since I read a book called Finding Eliza by Larissa Behrendt, and then another called Living with the Locals by John Maynard and Victoria Haskins which is about how colonial narratives dealt with factual episodes of settlers living with indigenous people for one reason or another (mostly after shipwrecks or convict escapes). Mostly the accounts sensationalised and focussed on the ‘savagery’ even when the escapees or survivors were treated very well and were not captives at all. These accounts perpetrated a particular idea of what the indigenous people were like in this period of our history regardless of the actual circumstances. I wish I’d read these two books before I read The Orenda which featured a character who had adapted entirely to living with the American Indians and shared some of their view of the world. I think they would influence my reading of any story with this trope…
LikeLike
The people who commissioned him to return her knew where her people were. The US military was busy rounding up the kidnapped children about this time – hunting them down and either paying a bit of ransom or forcibly taking them. Then they returned the children even when they didn’t want to go. (Many wanted to stay with their Indian captors.)
LikeLike
Well that is a story in itself. It’s weird, you know, the almost the first TV I saw when we came to Australia was cowboy-and-Indian shows and yet I know next to nothing about it in adulthood, except of course, that those shows were so wrong….
LikeLiked by 1 person
PS Are you going to put that wonderful photo on your About page?
LikeLike
I probably should, huh? – Okay – and thank you again.
LikeLiked by 1 person