News of the World (Paulette Jiles)

News of the World
Paulette Jiles
William Morrow
Fiction, Historical Fiction/Literary Fiction/Western
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: "Captain" Kyle Kidd once fought for the Confederacy and later ran a printing press in San Antonio, but for years now he has traveled the wilds of Texas, reading news articles from around the world to paying audiences in small frontier towns - everything from the ratification of the fifteenth amendment to harrowing Arctic survival stories to scientific discoveries to fluff pieces about Pennsylvania ice skaters. In his seventies now, he's starting to feel his age and his loneliness, but feels more at home on the road than he does back home, especially with his wife long dead and his grown children back east in post-Civil War Georgia. Besides, he has friends in many of his regular stops... and one has just talked him into a favor, albeit a well-paid favor, he never expected.
The girl was once known as Johanna, but for four years - since she was abducted by a band of Kiowa natives, her family slaughtered - she has been called Cicada. Under government orders, her adopted family turned her over to Indian agents, to be returned to an aunt and uncle she doesn't remember. Now, she has been handed over to an old white-haired man traveling in a rickety wagon, taking her further and further from the only home and life she knows - even tearing away the feather of her golden eagle guardian spirit as she is forced into strange, ill-fitting garments. She'd rather die than live in this ugly, alien White world with its confusing rules and strange language.
On the long and perilous road to Castroville, Kyle and the girl form an unexpected, unlikely bond - a bond that will be tested more than once, as each is forced to consider their futures in different ways.

REVIEW: I remember being somewhat intrigued by this tale when I heard of the movie (which I haven't seen), and meaning to get around to reading it. Part literary tale, part Western, it's the story of a rapidly changing world and two outwardly mismatched souls trying to survive in turbulent times.
Kyle was a soldier long before he was a man, falling into the rank of captain almost by accident and by surviving when many did not, and for keeping a cool head in combat (again, while others did not). He was happiest, though, when he was running messages between army units, just him and a sealed envelope and a wide, wild wilderness. In that way, his itinerant life in 1870 is a return to those days, as he brings news (and a chance to temporarily escape the harsh reality of everyday frontier life) to the hinterlands of a Texas that still has not succumbed to the taming hand of civilization, where the government hardly seems to care who is cheating, robbing, or slaughtering whom (at least if more brown, black, and native bodies fall than white ones) so long as those at the top can stuff their pockets. It's almost as if Kyle never really stopped living in a war zone, with raiding bands and thieves and corrupt lawmen all too common on the roads. Still, he has always been a principled man, living by his own strong moral compass even if those around him are only out for themselves. It's this moral compass, the unshakable belief that a job started must be finished and a promise to a friend is as binding as any legal document, as much as the money he is offered - a fifty-dollar gold piece - that compels Kidd to take the more-than-half-wild ten-year-old girl Johanna across 400 miles of barely-civilized Texan terrain.
The girl, for her part, has been traumatized twice over in her young life. At six, she survived the brutal slaughter of her family, for all that she does not seem to remember the incident. Then, she was torn away from the only family she ever knew and loved, the Kiowa mother and father and brothers and sisters she had bonded so strongly with that she cannot even imagine life away from them. Whatever English (or German, her parents being immigrants) she ever knew has been forgotten, along with everything she ever knew about White ways. She clings to the lessons and strength of her Kiowa teachings even as she is taken further away from that life and back to "family" she can't even remember. Slowly, almost despite herself, she connects with the kindly yet firm old man she is stuck traveling with. When they are set upon by the worst sort of robbers, their bond is cemented in gunfire and blood... but inevitably their journey must end. Will their bond and friendship end there, too? The decisions they make will test them both, but ultimately ring true for the characters and their world.
The tale moves fairly well, as the pair encounter various characters and different challenges and towns along the way, each part of the complex, sometimes contradictory tapestry of Texan life in the late 1800's. It's a world in a state of rapid flux, the old frontier lawlessness clashing against the rising tide of settlers and their settled ways, where carving out a small pocket of stability and happiness is sometimes nigh impossible but about the most any individual can hope to manage against the greater tides of the world. I thought the ending was a slight bit telegraphed, and the bits after lingered a hair too long, but overall it turned out to be an entertaining, sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes heartwarming story of two lost souls finding a connection - and a better future - in a wild and harsh land.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Thieving Forest (Martha Conway) - My Review
Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry) - My Review
The Legend of Charlie Fish (Josh Rountree) - My Review