News of the World: A Novel

News of the World: A Novel

Written by Scribd Editors

Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through Texas after the Civil War, offering live readings from newspapers to paying audiences to share with them the latest news. A widower and a veteran of two wars, Kidd finds peace in his solitary life.

While in Wichita Falls, a Kiowa tribe offers him a $50 gold piece to reunite a 10-year-old girl with her family in San Antonio. Years ago, a group of Kiowa raiders killed her parents and sister, but they spared her life and raised her. Now, her life is upended a second time as she is sent to her aunt and uncle.

Kidd takes the offer, and he and the girl form an unlikely bond on their 400-mile journey. When they reach the girl’s family, things are not as they’d hoped. She no longer remembers them, and they regard her as a burden. Now, Kidd must ask himself which is the moral choice: leaving the girl with an unloving family or taking her with him and becoming a kidnapper himself.

News of the World: A Novel by Paulette Jiles is a Nation Book Award Finalist in Fiction and has been adapted into a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks.