Now, at seventy-one, he enjoys the freedom of the road. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain once made his living as a printer, until the War Between the States took his press and everything with it. From the Back Cover Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd drifts through northern Texas, performing live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world-of the Irish pouring into New York City, of the railroad driving into the new state of Nebraska. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or be-in the eyes of the law-a kidnapper himself.

The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember-strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome.

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.

Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act civilized. Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johannas parents and sister sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence. 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. About the Book In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people- Book Synopsis Now a Major Motion Picture National Book Award Finalist-Fiction In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

Books by paulette jiles in order