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\n\u201cAll was in flux. Flux: a soldering aid that promotes the fusion of two surfaces, an unstable substance that catches fire.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Melancholy, world-weary veteran of three wars Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels Reconstruction-era Texas reading the news of the world to the information- and entertainment-starved populace for a dime a head. In Wichita Falls, Kidd is hired to return ten-year-old Johanna Leonberger, captured by the Kiowa four years earlier in a raid which killed her parents and sister, to her aunt and uncle in Castroville, a perilous three-week journey of four hundred miles through sparsely populated wilderness, in the anarchy of post\u2013Civil War Texas, and the ever-present threat of Comanche and Kiowa attack.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nJohanna (\u201csomething alien whose taxonomy is utterly unknown and probably dangerous\u201d) speaks no English and doesn\u2019t remember anything of her former life. Between escape attempts, she refuses to wear shoes, insists on sleeping on the floor, and is utterly bewildered as to why she should eat with a fork. Kidd and Johanna encounter multiple hardships on their odyssey, but perhaps the most challenging is what happens at the end of the line. How can Kidd turn her over after Johanna becomes his brave, ingenious \u201clittle warrior\u201d? \u201cBut now it was different . . . there was once again a life in his hands. Things mattered. The strange depression and spiritual chill he had felt back in Wichita Falls was gone.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Paulette Jiles\u2019s 2016 National Book Award\u2013nominated News of the World<\/em> is historical fiction with unexpected parallels to the present. Political turmoil, a \u201cworld weighted with railroads and modernity coming up against ancient tribal hatreds,\u201d in the forms of war, greed, racism, and xenophobia have made Texas, and the world, a more frightening place, then and now.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jiles doesn\u2019t use ten-dollar words, but oh my, the impactful combinations of simple language. Foreshadowing: \u201cthere were other, more covert faces, looks of interest and greed\u201d; imagery: \u201ca shy and obsequious road that dodged every bank and lift and wound through the pecan trees and never insisted on its own way.\u201d Pathos exists in Kidd\u2019s grocery list: \u201cfeed, flour, ammunition, soap, beef, candles, faith, hope, charity.\u201d Just plain beauty: \u201cAbove and behind them the Dipper turned on its great handle as if to pour night itself out onto the dreaming continent.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the midst of tragedy and near-misses, News of the World<\/em> is generously leavened with humor. \u201c[Kidd] could hear her begin a Kiowa chant. This could mean anything. It could mean she was resigned, it could mean she was going to hang herself with the curtain cording, or set the place on fire, or go to sleep.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
News of the World<\/em> is complete: heartbreaking sorrow, heart-stopping suspense, dulcet sweetness, elegiac ease, courageous spirit, rich characterization, satisfying in its poetic justice, and a setting that exceeds mere background. The plot is deceptively simple, the pace quick and steady. Of all of these elements, the reason to read News of the World is for the joy of watching the relationship develop between a world-weary seventy-one-year-old widower whose dreams are \u201ca place fragmented and without illumination\u201d and a young child of \u201ckinetic stillness.\u201d This novel will shred your heart, patch it back together, and make you enjoy it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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