Summary, Analysis & Review of Paulette Jiles's News of the World by Instaread

By Instaread Summaries

Summary, Analysis & Review of Paulette Jiles’s News of the World by Instaread

 

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News of the World by Paulette Jiles is the story of an unlikely friendship between an old man, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, and a 10-year-old girl, Johanna Leonberger, who was re

• Language: English
• Publisher: Instaread, Inc
• Release date: Feb 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781683785897

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Summary

News of the World by Paulette Jiles is the story of an unlikely friendship between an old man, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, and a 10-year-old girl, Johanna Leonberger, who was rescued from the Kiowa Indians. The novel is set in 1870 in Reconstruction-era Texas, a dangerous time and place known for frequent Indian raids and widespread anarchism. While journeying across wild Texas country together, Captain Kidd and Johanna become a family.

At age 71, the Captain has lived a long and full life. He has seen three wars along with the abolition of slavery and the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. He worked as a message runner for General Jackson’s army in the War of 1812 and as a message printer for General Taylor’s forces in the Mexican war. In middle age, he married Maria Luisa Betancort y Real, a woman from a Spanish family in San Antonio, and had two daughters, Olympia and Elizabeth. In 1865, he became a widower. Now the Captain travels from town to town reading the news aloud.

One day in Wichita Falls, the Captain’s friend Britt Johnson, a freed slave known for his ability to rescue captives from the Indians, asks the Captain for help. Britt has recovered Johanna from the Kiowa Indians, who took her when she was six years old. Johanna’s family was killed in an Indian raid, but she has an aunt