news of the world by paulette jiles reviews

He rode a very good horse and was concerned that someone might try to take the horse from him but so far so good. He had been at one time a printer but the war had taken his press and everything else, the economy of the Confederacy had fallen apart even before the surrender and so he now made his living in this drifting from one town to another in North Texas with his newspapers and journals in a waterproof portfolio and his coat collar turned up against the weather. Still he stayed his rounds, even during the cold spring rains. 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. Exquisitely rendered and morally complex, News of the World is a brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.Ĭaptain Kidd laid out the Boston Morning Journal on the lectern and began to read from the article on the Fifteenth Amendment. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become - in the eyes of the law - a kidnapper himself.

The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember - strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act 'civilized.' Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forging a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.Īrriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.

Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna's parents and sister sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio.

News of the world by paulette jiles reviews