First Chapter First Paragraph - News Of The World

I am linking up with Vicki @ I’d Rather Be At The Beach who hosts a meme every Tuesday to share the First Chapter First Paragraph or two of the book you are currently reading or plan to read soon.

The book I'm sharing this week is one that I actually finished reading last week.  I'm discussing it with our afternoon book group today and I'm looking forward to talking about it and hearing what others in the group thought.  It's set in Texas in 1870 and includes a lot of places and descriptions that are very familiar to me.  If you look to the end of this post, there is a picture of the Kerrville area of the Texas Hill Country.  Captain Kidd and Johanna traveled through a similar setting.  Here's a bit about:

News Of The World

by Paulette Jiles

First Paragraph(s):

Wichita Falls, Texas Winter 1870

Captain Kidd laid out the Boston Morning Journal on the lectern and began to read from the article on the Fifteenth Amendment.  He had been born in 1798 and the third war of his lifetime had ended five years ago and he hoped never to see another but now the news of the world aged him more than time itself.  Still he stayed his rounds, even during the cold spring rains.  He had been at one time a printer but the war had taken his press and everything else, the economy of the Confederacy had fallen apart even before the surrender and so he now made his living in this drifting from one town to another in North Texas with his newspapers and journals in a waterproof portfolio and his coat collar turned up against the weather.  He rode a very good horse and was concerned that someone might try to take the horse from him but so far so good.  So he had arrived in Wichita Falls on February 26 and tacked up his posters and put on his reading clothes in the stable.  There was a hard rain outside and it was noisy but he had a good strong voice.

Blurb:

In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.

In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.

Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.

Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself.

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News Of The World was a National Book Award Finalist a couple of years ago.  It's a spare story, but an absorbing one.  Have you read this book?  Have you visited the Texas Hill Country and towns west of Austin and San Antonio?  Towns like Fredericksburg and Kerrville and Llano and Lampasas?  Would you keep reading?  In case you can't tell, I liked this book very much and it is recommended!