The Bookworm: 'News of the World'

News of the World, by Paulette Jiles. William Morrow. 2016.

They were all odd, the returned captives. All peculiar with minds oddly formed, never quite one thing or another. As Doris had said back in Spanish Fort, all those captured as children and returned were restless and hungry for some spiritual solace, abandoned by two cultures, dark shooting stars lost in the outer heavens. (p. 124)

I read a book—a feat that has become pretty rare these days for reasons The Foxy Lady has chided me for not blogging about. (She says everything I post and tweet about are remnants of my former single-and-childless life, which is not wrong. It would do me good to spice things up with an update and current happenings.) Anyway, The Foxy Lady’s mom, The Director, recently read News of the World and recommended it to us, so I gave it a whirl.

Set in 1870, News of the World tells the story of Captain Jefferson Kidd, who travels from town to town in Texas reading articles from newspapers around the country and world to information-hungry pioneers. After a reading in Wichita Falls, the Captain volunteers to return Johanna, a 10-year-old girl who spent four years as a captive of the Kiowa, to her aunt and uncle. The book follows their journey from the flooded Red River along the northern border of Texas to Castroville, a hard and dangerous trip during a time of lawlessness and political unrest.

It has been a long time since I read a western. The last, and maybe only, was Slaughter by Elmer Kelton when I was in junior high. (I wanted to write my own western and borrowed it from the public library for research. Coincidentally, Slaughter is also set in Texas in the 1870s.) News of the World was a welcome change of pace from my usual fare, and I really enjoyed the historical snapshot. Texas in 1870 is a fascinating read, though there are sad similarities to the political tensions of our current era. (The differences were presumably settled and life went on, which provides some hope.) News of the World seems to be well-researched and concise; Jiles does a great job of immersing the reader in the world of the Captain and Johanna.

I really liked the Captain. He is well-developed and personable. Jiles provides much-appreciated background information about him, which gives him depth and makes it easy to understand and empathize with him. According to the author’s note, he is partially based on a real person who read the news of the world to audiences in small towns. His character is featured in another of Jiles’s books, The Color of Lightning, which I want to check out.

Johanna is an enigma on purpose, which is very well done. Jiles says Johanna’s characterization is inspired by The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians by Scott Zesch. The book highlights the case of Adolph Korn, who

was kidnapped by an Apache raiding party. Traded to Comaches, he thrived in the rough, nomadic existence, quickly becoming one of the tribe's fiercest warriors. Forcibly returned to his parents after three years, Korn never adjusted to life in white society. He spent his last years in a cave, all but forgotten by his family. (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312317898)

Korn’s inability to readjust to white society was apparently common among former captives; they were “all odd .... All peculiar with minds oddly formed, never quite one thing or another,” as the opening quote says. They were forever changed, and Johanna seems to be as well. Her future is ever present on Kidd’s mind and tugs at his heart strings. I am surprised, though, that she did not fight, resist her relocation, more.

The book is very descriptive and detailed. Jiles does an amazing job of painting the region’s unique scenery and flora—which, unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with and had no clue how to imagine. I am not well-versed with plants, especially those in Texas, so most of her poetic descriptions amounted to multi-word synonyms for greenery.

The pace is slow at first; Jiles details the events day by day. But she fast forwards through the last third or quarter of the book. It feels hurried. Jiles portends danger during certain stages of the trip, and I was expecting a lot more adventure, but she conveniently skips over them, jumping a week or so in time from one chapter to the next. I feel that there were many missed opportunities for drama and action, though I recognize there are long, tedious stretches of the trip that can easily be glanced over.

The writing is engaging, but it takes time to get used to. It does not flow easily, and Jiles has an aversion for commas. She also must dislike quotation marks because there is not a single one in News of the World. Yes, it is one of those books: one with dialogue without quotation marks. It is not difficult to differentiate the dialogue from the detail and narrative, but one needs to be mindful of it.

News of the World features a handy map of Texas, which features the route the Captain and Johanna take. It is handy and I appreciate its presence (I’m looking at you, Bobblehead). Though I did not consult it much, The Director said she looked at it often.

News of the World was made into a movie and released in 2020. Even from the trailer, I can see that the story was tweaked for the big screen. Tom Hanks plays Captain Kidd, and I am unsure how I feel about that. I like Tom Hanks, but he does not fit the image I created of Kidd. I imagine Kidd to be much bigger, like a portly grandfather figure akin to Wilford Brimley, though I’m unsure if there is any description of him like that in the book.