I read News of the World by Paulette Jiles in a last minute effort to get the book that features an unlikely friendship prompt of the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge. Little did I know that this book would be such a perfect fit for me.
Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is a drifter. In the aftermath of his time in the military in the War of 1812 and the Civil War, he wanders from town to town reading the news. Captain, a former printer who is now widowed, knows that his life could be more, but he keeps on going. It was crazy to think of all things that this man had seen in his life.
In Wichita Falls, Captain is offered a fifty-dollar gold piece to deliver a ten-year-old girl, Johanna, to her relatives in San Antonio. The catch is that four years earlier this little girl had been kidnapped by the Kiowa after killing her parents and sister. The Kiowa had raised her and she doesn't remember her family, her language, or even how to hold a fork. She is constantly trying to run away, but Captain is patient and they slowly make their way south.
I was unaware of the phenomenon of child captives in the frontier. Children who were captured by Native Americans assimilated into the culture and didn't adjust well when they were returned to their biological families. From the author's note:
They always wished to return to their adoptive families, even when they had been with their Indian families for less than a year. This was true for both the Anglo, German-Anglo, and Mexican children taken. (page 211)
Johanna and Captain made such a delightful pair. I was so pleased with them and wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. I am not really a western reader, but between this and the gloriousness of Lonesome Dove, maybe I should read more westerns. Also, SO MANY HATS. 4/5 stars
Lines of note:
Laughter is good for the soul and all your interior works. (page 176)
Things I looked up:
polar exploration ship Hansa (page 2) - embarked from Bremen, Germany on June 15, 1869, with the east coast of Greenland as their destination. Two ships made the journey: Captain Karl Koldewey’s Germania, a screw steamer of 140 tons, and the Hansa, commanded by Captain P.F.A. Hegemann. Only one ship returned. The Hansa was crushed in polar ice after being separated from the Germania, but her crew disembarked and survived for six months, drifting more than 1,000 miles on an ice floe. Eventually, they reached the Moravian mission station of Friedriksthal, to the west of Cape Farewell, in early June 1870.
Cynthia Parker (page 124) - a woman who had been kidnapped around age nine by a Comanche band during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836, where several of her relatives were killed. She was taken with several of her family members, including her younger brother John Richard Parker. Parker was taken into the tribe, eventually having three children with a chief. Twenty-four years later she was relocated and taken captive by Texas Rangers, aged approximately 33, and unwillingly forced to separate from her sons and conform to European-American society.
Temple Friend (page 124) - Lee Temple Friend was kidnapped during what became know as the Legion Valley Massacre in Llano, Texas when he was just eight years old. He was returned to his parents in El Dorado, Kansas when he was twelve, but he did not readapt well and he died in their care a few years later.
galluses (page 132) - During the nineteenth century, suspenders were sometimes called galluses.
Lola Montez (page 138) - an Irish dancer and actress who became famous as a Spanish dancer, courtesan, and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria
Isn't it crazy how people can be an household name and then within 150 years, no one has ever heard of them?!
Hat mentions (why hats?):
held their
hats (page 2, 90)
lifted his
hat (page 4)
took off his
hat (page 6, 100, 165, 182, 185, 204)
It was black, like his frock coat and vest and his trousers and his
hat and his blunt boots. (page 10)
traveling
hat (page 15, 134)
good black
hat (page 15, 74)
hat can (page 15)
shadow of their
hats (page 29)
old field
hat (page 32, 51, 157)
tossed their heads and their
hats (page 33)
He put his
hat over his face (page 39)
settled his
hat more firmly (page 42)
blew off people's
hats (page 48)
grasping his
hat brim (page 50)
walked by with his
hat (page 53)
silk
hat (page 61)
lifted his
hat (page 70, 134 x 2, 139)
pancake
hat(s) (page 90, 156)
put on his
hat (page 91)
put on his own
hat (page 92)
touch(ed) his
hat (page 93, 161x2, 162)
removed his
hat (page 93)
crown of a
hat (page 107)
under his
hat (page 107)
jerked off his
hat (page 117)
shabby
hats (page 126)
wavy brim of his old
hat (page 127)
hat with a very tall crown (page 130)
straw
hats (page 132)
hat brim (page 148)
broad-brimmed
hats (page 159)
sat his
hat lower (page 162)
none of their
hats seemed to fit (page 165)
replaced his
hat (page 166)
lifted their
hats (page 200)
his
hat shading his face (page 203)
his
hat between her two hands (page 206)
Heah is you
hat. (page 206)
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Do you regularly read westerns? Do you have a favorite?
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