News of the World

August 22, 2016
Jiles delivers a taut, evocative story of post–Civil War Texas in this riveting drama of a redeemed captive of the Kiowa tribe. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower, earns his living traveling around, reading news stories to gatherings of townspeople. While reading in Wichita Falls one evening in the winter of 1870, he sees an old acquaintance. Britt Johnson, the main character in Jiles’s The Color of Lightning, has just come through Indian Country with his crew. The men are returning a 10-year-old girl to her aunt and uncle in Castroville after she spent four years with the Kiowa. A free black man, Britt is reluctant to have a white child in his custody. He persuades the Captain to escort young Johanna on the remainder of the three-week journey. The Captain, who has grown daughters of his own, at first feels sorry for the girl. Johanna considers herself Kiowa; she chafes at wearing shoes and a dress, struggles to pronounce American words. Challenges and dangers confront the two during their journey, and they become attached. Jiles unfolds the stories of the Captain and Johanna, past and present, with the smooth assuredness of a burnished fireside tale, demonstrating that she is a master of the western. Agent: Liz Darhansoff, Darhansoff & Verrill.

Starred review from January 30, 2017
Reader Gardner proves yet again that he is one of the best voice actors in the audiobook industry today with his reading of Jiles’s evocative story of post–Civil War Texas. His deep, warm voice is such a perfect match for the character of the elderly widowed Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd that listeners immediately fall under his spell. Gardner’s rich vocal tones and his faultless timing of Jiles’s prose rhythms draw listeners quickly and deeply into the premise of the story and the lives of its characters. In 1870, the captain is called upon to escort 10-year-old Joanna—rescued from the Kiowa tribe that abducted and raised her—to distant relatives in northern Texas. As they travel in his rickety wagon on their 400-mile journey they share dangerous adventures and form a bond that leaves them with difficult decisions when they finally reach their destination. A Morrow hardcover.

December 1, 2015

Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an army veteran, makes his living in 1870 as a "reader" who travels around north Texas reading from various newspapers to a dime-a-head audience. A septuagenarian, he undertakes a 400-mile odyssey from Wichita Falls, TX, to San Antonio with a reluctant Johanna Leonberger, who has no memory of her life before she was kidnapped by the Kiowa Indians. Along the way, the ten-year-old warms up to the widowed captain as they face a number of perilous encounters. After venturing away from historical fiction to try her hand at dystopian fiction in Lighthouse Island, Canadian American author Jiles returns to mining lush Texas history and resurrecting some of the characters from 2009's The Color of Lightening in this tale. VERDICT This Western is not to be missed by Jiles's fans and lovers of Texan historical fiction. The final chapter's solid resolution will satisfy those who like to know what ultimately becomes of beloved characters. [See Prepub Alert, 9/21/15.]--Wendy W. Paige, Shelby Cty. P.L., Morristown, IN

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2017

Kidd, a retired Civil War captain, didn't have babysitting on his mind when he drifted into town, but he ends up escorting a 10-year-old to her family for a $50 gold piece. Johanna was captured by the Kiowa after her German immigrant parents were attacked and killed, and now the unlikely duo must travel through rough Texas country together. Capt. Kidd raised money by reading newspapers to townspeople (hence the title) and tries to "civilize" Johanna, all while the two of them fight off raiders and thieves of all types. As the journey continues, the pair become closer, and when they finally arrive in San Antonio, Capt. Kidd must make the hardest decision of his life. A National Book Award finalist for fiction, this slim Western novel set in crooked Reconstruction Texas is simultaneously brief and expansive. The author is a poet, and the book, with its carefully turned phrases, is reminiscent of Kent Myers's Alex Award-winning The Work of Wolves. VERDICT The feel good ending will bring tears to the hardest of readers, and the overall tone will speak to teens who want a short, uplifting read.-Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2015

After the Civil War, Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels around northern Texas, reading newspapers aloud to paying crowds. Then he agrees to return ten-year-old Johanna, raised among the Kiowa after they killed her parents, to relatives 400 miles south in San Antonio. From New York Times best-selling author Jiles, twice long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2016
In post-Civil War Texas, a 10-year-old girl makes an odyssey back to her aunt and uncle's home after living with the Kiowa warriors who had killed her parents four years earlier. Johanna Leonberger remembers almost nothing of her first 6 years, when she lived with her parents. Instead, her memory extends only as far as her Kiowa family--she speaks no English and by white standards is uncivilized. Tired of being harassed by the cavalry, the Kiowa sell her back to an Indian agent for "fifteen Hudson's Bay four-stripe blankets and a set of silver dinnerware." Enter Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a 70-year-old veteran of two wars and, in 1870, when the novel takes place, a professional reader--he travels through Texas giving public readings from newspapers to an audience hungry for events of the world. At first reluctant to take her the 400 miles to the town near San Antonio where her aunt and uncle live, he soon realizes his itinerant life makes him the most plausible person for the job--and he also knows it's the right thing to do. He buys a wagon, and they start their journey, much to the reluctance and outrage of the undomesticated Johanna; but a relationship soon begins to develop between the two. Jiles makes the narrative compelling by unsentimentally constructing a bond based at least in part on a mutual need for survival, but slowly and delicately, Johanna and Kidd begin to respect as well as need one another. What cements their alliance is facing many obstacles along the way, including an unmerciful landscape; a lack of weapons; and a vicious cowboy and his companions, who want to kill Kidd and use the girl for their own foul purposes. As one might expect, Kidd and Johanna eventually develop a deep and affectionate relationship; when they arrive at the Leonbergers, the captain must make a difficult choice about whether to leave the girl there or hold onto her himself. Lyrical and affecting, the novel succeeds in skirting cliches through its empathy and through the depth of its major characters.

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Starred review from May 15, 2016
In the winter of 1970, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd has made a fairly comfortable living in northern Texas. He travels from town to town, reading current news of ratified amendments and polar expeditions to (mostly) attentive audiences. When he's asked to deliver a 10-year-old German girl back to her relatives in San Antonio in exchange for $50 in gold, he agrees. Johanna's parents had been killed by the Kiowa, but she was spared and was raised as one of their own for four years. Captain Kidd finds that Johanna, now in his care, has lost nearly all memory of her language, comportment, and upbringing. Facing a 400-mile journey filled with threats of ambush and an uncooperative charge, Captain Kidd wonders if his choice to deliver the girl was the right one. Jiles' background as a poet is particularly evident when the captain and Johanna learn how to communicate, bantering bits of their respective languages back and forth. Jiles' lyrical style and minimal punctuation allow the reader to become immersed in the dusty Texan landscape, witnessing the anguish, fear, compassion, and joy in the unlikely pair's journey, which will appeal to fans of Tracy Chevalier and Geraldine Brooks.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)