Book
News of the World
First published 2016
In 1870, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas reading newspaper reports to isolated communities for ten cents a listener. At Wichita Falls he accepts responsibility for Johanna Leonberger, a ten-year-old girl recently recovered from the Kiowa people who raised her after killing her family. Kidd is asked to return her to German relatives near San Antonio.
The four-hundred-mile journey exposes the pair to bandits, political violence, severe weather and the dangers of a state still under Reconstruction. Johanna resists the language and customs she is expected to reclaim, while Kidd gradually recognises that legal kinship does not guarantee care. Their uneasy partnership becomes a test of responsibility, trust and the meaning of family.
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