Comment

Jul 31, 2017CaptainHecto rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This is the prequel to 'News of the World', and it displays the same outstanding qualities of the latter book: the author's exceptional ability to describe the natural world and the material culture of both Indian peoples and white settlers along the Texas frontier. As with 'News', the well-crafted story focuses on the recovery and return of white captives; but the message here is clearer and broader. We are made witness to a collision of civilizations that no 'enlightened policy' can prevent from running its inevitable course. The Kiowa and Comanche are going to go down fighting for their way of life because it is the right thing for them to do - indeed the only thing. In the author's sure hand these men and women are brave , joyful, clever, generous - but also gratuitously violent and cruel, with little capacity for empathy. The balance that she strikes in character description is really admirable. These are flesh-and-blood Indians, not Rousseauian children of Nature. Yes, they have been dispossessed by the whites, who are guilty of mass violence as well - something that Jiles makes abundantly clear throughout her narrative. But her ability to portray this clash as a 'fateful' encounter, a true tragedy, is what makes this a superior book - and a darn good read as well.