LAUNCH DAY! Simon the Fiddler is out!
And with the Coronavirus and lockdowns, neither I nor any other author with books coming out in April are going on tour, meeting with bookclubs, etc. All those things necessary to engage the public’s interest, but so it goes. Reviews are coming in and they are great.
Ron Charles, Washington Post
“…thoroughly charming, and when the final battle royal arrives in San Antonio it’s just the rousing ballad we want to hear.”
New York Times;
“The reader is treated to a kind of alchemy on the page when character, setting and song converge all at the right notes, generating an authentic humanity that is worth remembering and celebrating.”
ABC News (online)
“Jiles’ sparse but lyrical writing is a joy to read…It’s a beautifully written book and a worthy follow-up to News of the World. That novel is due in theaters, starring Tom Hanks, later this year. Until then, lose yourself in this entertaining tale.”
Wall Street Journal
“Her description of Simon and Doris’ traveling on separate journeys across the Texas landscape is superb, causing us to feel the elation and sense of possibility that rises in the hearts of man, woman and beast in setting out on the road.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Jiles has produced a classic western adventure tale…it illustrates the cosmic dimension of music, its ability to create unity among disparate people who “listen to the phrases of melody that somehow fitted together as constellations fit together far away in the deeps of space, shining over the Gulf”.
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You remember Simon the fiddler from News of the World. He was playing in Spanish Fort when the Captain arrived with Johanna. You remember the love of his life Doris Dillon. This is the story of how they met, how Simon survived the last battle of the Civil War and how they lived through his own terrible mistakes and the chaos of Texas under Reconstruction. It is a story of music and what those who create music must endure in a rough-and-tumble world.
News of the World —the film, with Tom Hanks as the Captain has finished production and is now in post-production and thankfully Tom hanks and his wife Rita Wilson have recovered. The movie is supposed to be out in December of 2020, which is what Gail Mutrux, the producer, tells me. It seems a long time but then film is a collaborative art and involves so much in terms of equipment and studio work and editing and disitribution and …. how would I even know what all it involves? Oh yes, getting a caterer for the crew on the film site. Food. All the author does is sit down and write, in silence, (hopefully) sometimes by hand, sometimes on a computer, and has charge of everything, dialogue and sets and costumes, all in one’s head. Very striking contrast.
Quote from Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain:
“A powerful, richly realized journey…Captain Kidd belongs in the great pantheon of western characters along with True Grit’s Rooster Cogburn and Lonesome Dove’s Gus and Call’.
1870, North Texas, rainy and cold. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels from town to town giving readings from the latest newspapers, bringing the news of the world to isolated towns on the Texas frontier. In Wichita Falls, he is asked to return a captive girl to her relatives near San Antonio, 400 miles to the south. The old man and the ten-year-old start out on a hazardous journey, no less risky because the girl considers herself now a Kiowa and does not have the slightest desire to return. Bandits and Comanche raids and violent weather make as many difficulties as the ten-year old girl who can’t speak English, eats with her hands and knows how to use a revolver. In the end, he finds he must return her to relatives who don’t want her, even though he and the girl have become trusting friends. A story of courage and honor and the truth that these two things are often the possession of even the unlikeliest people.
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* * * * Lighthouse Island
New York Times — ‘Inventive futurism and rollicking wit’
Washington Post —‘Jiles leaps forward in her intriguing new novel…an inspiring vision’
Austin-American Statesman —‘A heroine unflaggingly brave under fire…she frames quiet moments of human dignity and compassion’
Dallas Weekly — ‘Astonishing world-building! There’s hope that there is more to come’.
In the coming centuries the earth is crowded with cities and drought is so widespread that water is rationed. There are no maps, no borders, no numbered years, and no freedom, except for an elite few.
Growing up, orphan Nadia Stepan dreams of a green vacation spot called Lighthouse Island. When a chance for escape arises, Nadia sets off in search of the rumored oasis and along the way meets a man who changes the course of her life. Together, they evade arrest and head north toward a place of wild beauty that lies beyond the megapolis—Lighthouse Island.
Photography by Jeff George, lightkeeper and photographer of Lennard Island Light Station, Vancouver Island.
Available Now 
In 1863, as the War Between the States creeps inevitably toward its bloody conclusion, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson ventures west into unknown territory with his wife, Mary, and their three children, searching for a life and a future. But their dreams are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the Johnsons’ settlement while Britt is away establishing a business. Returning to find his friends and neighbors slain or captured, his eldest son dead, his beloved and severely damaged Mary enslaved, and his remaining children absorbed into an alien society that will never relinquish its hold on them, the heartsick freedman vows not to rest until his family is whole again. Order your copy.
Oil is king of East Texas during the darkest years of the Great Depression. The Stoddard girls—responsible Mayme, whip-smart tomboy Jeanine, and bookish Bea—trail their father from town to town as he searches for work on the pipelines and derricks. The family’s fortunes sink further than they ever anticipated when a questionable “accident” leaves the girls and their mother, Elizabeth, alone to confront the cruelest hardships of these hardest of times. Returning to their previously abandoned family farm, the resilient Stoddard women must now place their last hopes for salvation in a wildcat oil well that eats up what little they have left . . . and on the back of late patriarch Jack’s one true legacy, a dangerous racehorse named Smoky Joe. Order your copy.
For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War between the States is a plague that threatens devastation, despite the family’s avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare that tears apart her family. The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women’s prison. But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator falls in love with her and vows to return for her when the fighting is over. Before he leaves for battle, he bestows upon her a precious gift: freedom. Now an escaped “enemy woman,” Adair must make her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise . . . seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory. Order your copy.
About the author
Paulette Jiles is a novelist and poet. Her best-selling novels include Enemy Women, Stormy Weather and The Color Of Lightning. She won Canada’s highest award for poetry, The Governor General’s Award. She graduated from the University of Missouri in Romance Languages. She lives near San Antonio, Texas. Agent is the superlative Liz Darhansoff; editor, the incomparable Jennifer Brehl. Paulette’s publisher for News of the World, Lighthouse Island, Stormy Weather, Enemy Women and Color of Lightning is Harper Collins
