Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Review: Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd has fought in three wars, starting with the War of 1812 when he was just barely 16. Now, in 1870, he travels across Texas bringing the inhabitants news of distant places. He reads from newspapers from Philadelphia to India to London, and steers clear of politics as best he can.
On a pass through Northern Texas, he is entrusted with a young girl, recently rescued from the Kiowa, after having been abducted four years earlier. Now ten, Johanna has no real memory of her family, doesn't remember how to speak English, and, if asked, would consider herself a member of the Kiowa nation. But nobody asked her. The Kiowa are giving up all of their captives under threat of raids, and Johanna's remaining family has paid handsomely for her to be shepherded back to their home near San Antonio. It's a long journey (handy maps in the endpapers of the book help the reader follow along) and one fraught with dangers.
The real story though, is what happens between Johanna and the Captain as they travel and begin to feel like family. Unfortunately, Jiles's spare writing style doesn't really do justice to the feelings she wants the reader to understand the characters are feeling.
As for the movie, it is similarly spare, giving it the same overall tone as the book. Several major plot points are changed, for what I'm sure were valid cinematographic reasons, but the overall story arc is the same, and being able to see the expressions on the characters' faces certainly helps in understanding the feelings that Jiles writes into her story.
No comments:
Post a Comment