News of the World

“Human aggression and depravity still managed to astonish him.”

Captain Kidd, a retired Army soldier, now travels the late-1800s western United States delivering news from handpicked newspapers to small towns and small cities looking for glimpses at a world they'll never see. While on one of these stops, he's tasked with returning “Johanna” to blood relatives living in south Texas. “Johanna” was captured by Kiowa raiders when very young, and then ransomed back to the US Army. She remembers nothing of the world she was captured from, and initially wants only to be returned to the only family she's known. Captain Kidd agrees to take her, and we're brought along on their journey of unlikely friendship and musings about belonging and identity to her Texas family.

This was a super sweet book with a super sweet premise that I thought I'd find boring because I don't normally do super sweet fluffy books. The writing was phenomenal though, and my heart went out to this young girl grappling with large concepts of trying to figure out where she fits into the two worlds that don't seem to want her. I ended up really enjoying the journey this book took me on, and I especially loved the “where we all ended up” style ending that I know isn't everyone's taste.

There's also evidently a movie that was made for this book back in 2020 that I missed (for, I guess, obvious reasons), that I might even check out.