News of the World

by Paulette Jiles, 220 pages, William Morrow, 2016
Reviewed by Sue Fountain

"News of the World” by Paulette Jiles was nominated for a National Book Award. The time period is post-Civil War. I love books about survivors. In this case, there is a young girl who was captured by the Kiowa and lived with them for four years before being “recovered.” The main character is a 71 year old man who rides around to towns in the Southwest reading newspapers to people. He charges ten cents a person, and usually gets a pretty full room. Lots of people don’t know how to read, or they don’t get any news from the outside world, so this is a treat for them. He agrees to return the girl to some of her family in San Antonio, and thus begins their adventures together. It is a great story of how their trust and friendship develops. What I find most interesting is that the author comments in the end that children who were captured by Indian tribes did not want to return to their former life.