In 1870, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels across North Texas, reading international newspapers to paying audiences in small towns. He accepts a commission to transport Johanna Leonberger, a ten-year-old girl recently ransomed from the Kiowa tribe, four hundred miles south to her surviving relatives near San Antonio. Johanna, who was captured four years earlier, identifies as Kiowa and speaks no English. As they navigate the lawless territory between Wichita Falls and the Texas Hill Country, the pair survives an armed pursuit by bounty hunters and the harsh physical environment of the frontier.
Historical fiction readers who value period accuracy over melodrama will appreciate the technical details of post-Civil War Reconstruction and the logistics of nineteenth-century travel. The narrative provides an unsentimental look at the conflict between settler and indigenous cultures through the eyes of a child caught between both. Readers walk away with a specific understanding of how information was shared in an isolated society and the logistical difficulties of reintegrating captives who no longer recognize their birth culture as their own.
Balanced in tone; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Story Seeker. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2016
- Language
- EN
