Kidd, a retired Civil War captain, didn't have babysitting on his mind when he drifted into town, but he ends up escorting a 10-year-old to her family for a $50 gold piece. Johanna was captured by the Kiowa after her German immigrant parents were attacked and killed, and now the unlikely duo must travel through rough Texas country together. Capt. Kidd raised money by reading newspapers to townspeople (hence the title) and tries to "civilize" Johanna, all while the two of them fight off raiders and thieves of all types. As the journey continues, the pair become closer, and when they finally arrive in San Antonio, Capt. Kidd must make the hardest decision of his life. A National Book Award finalist for fiction, this slim Western novel set in crooked Reconstruction Texas is simultaneously brief and expansive. The author is a poet, and the book, with its carefully turned phrases, is reminiscent of Kent Myers's Alex Award-winning The Work of Wolves. VERDICT The feel-good ending will bring tears to the hardest of readers, and the overall tone will speak to teens who want a short, uplifting read.-Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an army veteran, makes his living in 1870 as a "reader" who travels around north Texas reading from various newspapers to a dime-a-head audience. A septuagenarian, he undertakes a 400-mile odyssey from Wichita Falls, TX, to San Antonio with a reluctant Johanna Leonberger, who has no memory of her life before she was kidnapped by the Kiowa Indians. Along the way, the ten-year-old warms up to the widowed captain as they face a number of perilous encounters. After venturing away from historical fiction to try her hand at dystopian fiction in Lighthouse Island, Canadian American author Jiles returns to mining lush Texas history and resurrecting some of the characters from 2009's The Color of -Lightening in this tale. VERDICT This Western is not to be missed by Jiles's fans and lovers of Texan historical fiction. The final chapter's solid resolution will satisfy those who like to know what ultimately becomes of beloved characters. [See Prepub Alert, 9/21/15.]-Wendy W. Paige, Shelby Cty. P.L., Morristown, IN © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

AS PAULETTE JILES'S new novel opens, it's the winter of 1870 in Wichita Falls, Tex., and raining hard. The town's mood is as ugly as the weather. The 15th Amendment has just been ratified, granting the vote to all qualified men "without regard to race or color," and the air is full of dank mutterings. The Indian wars smolder on and federal troops remain in Texas, enforcing a ban on side arms. Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a septuagenarian widower, former soldier and printer, travels around North Texas entertaining grim little audiences with newspaper readings about these troubling times, leavened with tales of the world's "distant magic," from erupting volcanoes to "electromagnetic disturbances in the ether." Despite trafficking in wonders, the captain's own life strikes him as "thin and sour," and it only looks to be getting worse when he's introduced to an expressionless little girl, referred to by her escort as "that maniac," who needs to be returned to relatives outside San Antonio, a wildly hazardous 400-mile journey. Ten-year-old Johanna Leonberger was 6 when the Kiowa took her captive after murdering her parents and little sister. In the aftermath, she became Cicada, daughter of Turning Water and Three Spotted, and Kiowa to the soul - until she was traded to an Army agent for "15 Hudson's Bay four-stripe blankets and a set of silver dinnerware." Now twice orphaned, she has forgotten the English language and everything about her earlier life. "The child seems artificial as well as malign," the captain observes at his first sight of Johanna, huddled under a blanket. Nevertheless, he agrees to transport her for "a Spanish coin of eight escudos in 22-karat gold." With it, he buys a wagon painted with the legend "Curative Waters East Mineral Springs Texas" in gold letters and packs it with supplies. The town whores obligingly strip Johanna of her deerskin shift decorated with elk teeth, give her a bath (she has lice) and cram her into worsted stockings, undergarments and a dress, a process that requires two hours and ruins the establishment's wallpaper. And off the captain and Johanna go. As one might expect, the old man is tough but the little girl is tougher; their road is hard and their enemies bad; they forge a kinship based on mutual respect as they contend with ambushes, shootouts, brawls, perilous river crossings and good-hearted widow ladies. At every turn, this story square-dances with cliché, and at every turn it's thrilling. Jiles, a poet as well as a novelist, has recognized that the best stories are the known ones, as long as they're told entrancingly and grow ever stranger as they roll on through familiar territory. Mostly she manages this small miracle by keeping her story quietly ironic and exquisitely particular. Lest one should hope for Johanna's return to the Kiowa, as she painfully desires, it's made clear that, threatened with losing their rations and being hunted down by the cavalry, they no longer want her. Wisely, Jiles reveals Johanna's deep attachment to her former life only through what persists of it: "Like all people who do not wear shoes her big toes pointed straight ahead." Both the place and the period are rendered with precise economy, and the characters communicate their concerns mostly through what they keep an eye on. Guns, for one thing, which the captain, who has lived through three wars, knows as intimately as "his inks and his papers." When accosted by a company of United States Army infantrymen on horseback, he notes that they carry "squareback Navy Colt five-shot revolvers that looked as big as pork hams in their holsters." He can distinguish a revolver from a rifle shot by sound, though during one astonishing gun battle it's Johanna who provides an ingenious solution when he runs out of ammunition. But chiefly the captain tries to keep an eye on Johanna as she struggles to adjust to her new life, shown most vividly through her rediscovery of English. "Kep-dun," she calls him. "Chohenna," she learns to call herself. Along with so much else, she has permanently lost her "R"s - the Kiowa language has no R - and so "hungry" is "hungli," horse is "hoas." Like all returned captives, Johanna will be "never quite one thing or another," a reality reflected in her speech. She's "been through two creations," as one character puts it, leaving her forever alien. The "curative" aspect of Johanna's relationship with the captain is signaled from the first pages by that wagon. The real surprise in this fable-like story is the gorgeousness of their journey, from Spanish Fort along the flooded Red River, where a stormy sky is filled with "blinding neurons of fire," to "the red and pink granite" mountains north of Llano. In a world where live oak leaves fall "like pennies" and teams of oxen move in "a ponderous waltz," everything is news. And at scarcely 200 pages, this exhilarating novel, a finalist for this year's National Book Award, travels through its marvelous terrain so quickly that one is shocked, almost stricken, to reach the end. So do what I did: Read it again. SUZANNE BERNE'S most recent novel is "The Dogs of Littlefield"

In post-Civil War Texas, a 10-year-old girl makes an odyssey back to her aunt and uncle's home after living with the Kiowa warriors who had killed her parents four years earlier. Johanna Leonberger remembers almost nothing of her first 6 years, when she lived with her parents. Instead, her memory extends only as far as her Kiowa familyshe speaks no English and by white standards is uncivilized. Tired of being harassed by the cavalry, the Kiowa sell her back to an Indian agent for "fifteen Hudson's Bay four-stripe blankets and a set of silver dinnerware." Enter Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a 70-year-old veteran of two wars and, in 1870, when the novel takes place, a professional readerhe travels through Texas giving public readings from newspapers to an audience hungry for events of the world. At first reluctant to take her the 400 miles to the town near San Antonio where her aunt and uncle live, he soon realizes his itinerant life makes him the most plausible person for the joband he also knows it's the right thing to do. He buys a wagon, and they start their journey, much to the reluctance and outrage of the undomesticated Johanna; but a relationship soon begins to develop between the two. Jiles makes the narrative compelling by unsentimentally constructing a bond based at least in part on a mutual need for survival, but slowly and delicately, Johanna and Kidd begin to respect as well as need one another. What cements their alliance is facing many obstacles along the way, including an unmerciful landscape; a lack of weapons; and a vicious cowboy and his companions, who want to kill Kidd and use the girl for their own foul purposes. As one might expect, Kidd and Johanna eventually develop a deep and affectionate relationship; when they arrive at the Leonbergers, the captain must make a difficult choice about whether to leave the girl there or hold onto her himself. Lyrical and affecting, the novel succeeds in skirting clichs through its empathy and through the depth of its major characters. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Jiles delivers a taut, evocative story of post-Civil War Texas in this riveting drama of a redeemed captive of the Kiowa tribe. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower, earns his living traveling around, reading news stories to gatherings of townspeople. While reading in Wichita Falls one evening in the winter of 1870, he sees an old acquaintance. Britt Johnson, the main character in Jiles's The Color of Lightning, has just come through Indian Country with his crew. The men are returning a 10-year-old girl to her aunt and uncle in Castroville after she spent four years with the Kiowa. A free black man, Britt is reluctant to have a white child in his custody. He persuades the Captain to escort young Johanna on the remainder of the three-week journey. The Captain, who has grown daughters of his own, at first feels sorry for the girl. Johanna considers herself Kiowa; she chafes at wearing shoes and a dress, struggles to pronounce American words. Challenges and dangers confront the two during their journey, and they become attached. Jiles unfolds the stories of the Captain and Johanna, past and present, with the smooth assuredness of a burnished fireside tale, demonstrating that she is a master of the western. Agent: Liz Darhansoff, Darhansoff & Verrill. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* In the winter of 1970, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd has made a fairly comfortable living in northern Texas. He travels from town to town, reading current news of ratified amendments and polar expeditions to (mostly) attentive audiences. When he's asked to deliver a 10-year-old German girl back to her relatives in San Antonio in exchange for $50 in gold, he agrees. Johanna's parents had been killed by the Kiowa, but she was spared and was raised as one of their own for four years. Captain Kidd finds that Johanna, now in his care, has lost nearly all memory of her language, comportment, and upbringing. Facing a 400-mile journey filled with threats of ambush and an uncooperative charge, Captain Kidd wonders if his choice to deliver the girl was the right one. Jiles' background as a poet is particularly evident when the captain and Johanna learn how to communicate, bantering bits of their respective languages back and forth. Jiles' lyrical style and minimal punctuation allow the reader to become immersed in the dusty Texan landscape, witnessing the anguish, fear, compassion, and joy in the unlikely pair's journey, which will appeal to fans of Tracy Chevalier and Geraldine Brooks.--Turza, Stephanie Copyright 2016 Booklist