UC Book Club - February 5

The UC Book Club will next meet on Wednesday, February 5, at 4 p.m. via Google Meet to discuss News of the World by Paulette Jiles.  The novel begins after the Civil War with an unencumbered military captain now traveling around reading newspapers in a public forum to audiences who cannot read themselves.  He is offered a reward if he will return a young girl kidnapped years ago by Kiowa raiders to her remaining family members.  What ensues is a road trip between these two psychologically wounded characters.  Janet Maslin writing for The New York Times says, “News of the World is a narrow (because only 240 pages) but exquisite book about the joys of freedom . . . [and] the discovery of unexpected, proprietary love between two people who have never experienced" a meaningful connection before.  Maslin goes on to praise the novel's "pure adventure in the wilds of an untamed Texas and the reconciling of vastly different cultures."  The novel was a National Book Award finalist in 2016 when it first came out in hard cover and has also been made into a movie in 2020.