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Home / Series / Southwest Saga

Series

Southwest Saga

The Southwest Saga links four novels set across Texas and the southern frontier from the Civil War to 1870. The Color of Lightning begins with the historically based story of Britt Johnson and his family during the Texas–Comanche conflict. News of the World follows Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd and Johanna through Reconstruction Texas, while Simon the Fiddler returns to the war’s closing months and the difficult beginnings of civilian life.

Chenneville extends the sequence through the journey of a wounded Union veteran pursuing a murderer from Missouri towards San Antonio. Characters and references pass between the books, although each novel has its own central story. In narrative chronology, Simon the Fiddler and Chenneville precede News of the World; the series numbers retain the volume order identified on Paulette Jiles’s author site.

Reading order

Books in this series (4 books)

Simon the Fiddler cover

#2 – Simon the Fiddler

Paulette Jiles

In March 1865, twenty-three-year-old Simon Boudlin is finally conscripted into the Confederate army after years of avoiding military service. His talent as a fiddler helps him survive the last fighting in Texas and brings him into a travelling band of former soldiers. At a military gathering…

Chenneville cover

#3 – Chenneville

Paulette Jiles

Union lieutenant John Chenneville survives a severe head wound during the final months of the Civil War and spends nearly a year relearning how to walk, speak and remember. When he returns to Missouri, he discovers that his sister Lalie, her husband and their infant child…

News of the World cover

#4 – News of the World

Paulette Jiles

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.…