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BOOK REVIEW
NEWS OF THE WORLD
Reviewed by Jennifer A. Sheffield
Jennifer She eld pursued graduate work, studying print journalism at Boston University after getting a degree in Anthropology from Skidmore College and University College, London. In between, she worked in media relations for the U.S. Olympic Committee. The Albany Times Union, Forest Hills Times, The Chronicle of the Horse, and MUST SEE Magazine have published her stories. She lives in Apalachicola, Florida where she is a freelance contributor to The Times, and works at an accounting rm. She is active in her church, practices yoga, loves local music, and walks a small brown dog.
In News of the World (2016), a work of historical ction set in Texas in the 1870s after the Civil War, novelist and poet Paulette Jiles uses the word “ ux” as “a soldering aid that promotes fusion of two surfaces” or, the “process by which metals join together by melting.”
In this book, that process is a 400-mile jour- ney from one end of Texas to the other during its wildest days when Indian Territory was alive with con ict. Travelers had to assume loyalty and take charity if they were to dodge threats by rogue U.S. Army patrols and lawless cow- boys.
The metals are the two main characters – Captain Je erson Kidd who reads newspaper news aloud to paying audiences, and Johan- na, a 10-year-old German girl who has been rescued after seven years in captivity with the Kiowa tribe. Both are haunted by memories of war but must work together to survive; they smooth each other’s sharp edges, just as Kidd soothes the temperaments of his audiences by selecting readings relevant to the time such as fairytales, science discoveries, survivors of sinking ships, and the progress of the Fran-
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BONNIE BRANT
co-Prussian War. He believes, “if people had true knowledge of the world...they would not take up arms.”
The belief that there is a graceful ending to our grizzly rides in life is the rope Jiles uses to tug us through the mud of News of the World. Ironically, when Kidd returns to San Antonio, he is met with news from his world in the form of letters from his daughters that ultimately prompt him to intervene when Johanna’s fami- ly will not adopt her.
Jiles’ story arc is, “Maybe...we have just one message,” and that, “...it must be carried by hand through life – all the way – and at the end, handed over, sealed.” To this I would add, it is the journey on which we meet people who move our messages so that the world bene ts from them.
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