The Brown Book Club will meet on Sunday, August 12 to discuss Paulette Jiles’ News of the World (fiction, 240 pp, 2016), a 2016 National Book Award finalist. We’ll begin at 6PM with dinner, then go on to discussion. Please RSVP by Friday, August 10 by contacting the event organizer, who will provide location information. Mention any food allergies, and bring $6 – $8 for the meal.
“In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader, Jefferson Kidd, agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa, Johanna, back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.” From Amazon: “This tale of these two making their way through perils both natural (swollen rivers) and human (hostile tribes and male predators) on the lengthy trip from Wichita Falls to San Antonio is completely absorbing.” “It’s short, perfectly paced and constructed, and chronicles Kidd’s journey with Johanna: both the physical voyage they make across the Texas landscape, and the obstacles they surmount together, and his internal journey, as he bonds with the young girl who begins to call him, alternatively, ‘Keh-pun’, or the Kiowa word for grandfather. When Kidd discovers her aunt and uncle have a reputation for using their young relatives as indentured servants and working them to the bone, the dilemma is even more dramatic. What can or should he do, when all he wants is a peaceful old age?”