Mansfield Reads! One City One Book is a community-wide reading event that encourages all Mansfield residents to read the same book at the same time. The program goals are to promote awareness of the library and foster a sense of community through reading. The concept began in Seattle in 1998 and has spread across the country into many communities large and small. The Friends of Mansfield Public Library is proud to bring in author Paulette Jiles to discuss the book News of the World.
Celebrate an evening with the author, Paulette Jiles to discuss the Mansfield READS 2021 book on October 21, 2020 at 7 p.m. at Legacy High School. Be a part of this exciting night!
About the book:
A New York Times best seller and a major motion picture.
"It is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings 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, forging 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. Exquisitely rendered and morally complex, News of the World is a brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust." -Harper Collins Publishers
About the Author: Paulette Jiles
PAULETTE JILES is a novelist, poet, and memoirist. She is the author of the novels News of the World, a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award, Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, and Lighthouse Island, and the memoir Cousins. She lives on a ranch near San Antonio, Texas. For more information please visit: www.paulettejiles.com
