Dragonfly in Amber

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon is the second book of the Outlander series. This book is once again, incredibly researched and fraught with Scottish history. Another one I couldn't put down!

Twenty years had passed since Claire Randall had returned to "real time".  She had completed medical school and she and her husband Frank and their daughter Brianna lived in Boston.  Two years after Frank died, Claire and Brianna went  to Scotland so Claire could show her where Claire and Frank had gone after the war.  Shortly after arriving, they went to visit Roger Wakefield, a historian.  His uncle had been a friend of Frank and Claire's and had recently died.  While visiting with Roger, Claire became interested in his work and over the next few weeks, Roger helped Claire discover that Jamie Fraser had not died in the battle of Culloden as she had always thought.  She also got the courage up to tell Brianna about her time travel and that Brianna was really Jamie's daughter.

News of the World

News of the World will definitely be in contention for my best read of the year. I loved it. The author is Paulette Jiles.  I had read Enemy Women by her several years ago and liked it.  I may re-read it to see if it was better than I remember. This book (News of the World) was a National Book Award finalist. The story takes place in 1870.  Captain Jefferson Kidd was a seventy year old widower who at the time was in Wichita Falls. Kidd was a "reader".  He chose articles from national or local newspapers and read them to audiences who usually did not have access to news. That evening an old friend of Kidd's appeared.  He had a ten year old girl named Johanna who had been taken captive by the Kiowa tribe four years before. He was returning her to her aunt and uncle who lived in Texas and who were all that remained of her family.  The friend convinced Kidd to take the girl to Texas for him. He agreed and thus began the three week journey with Johanna.  She wanted to be back with the Kiowa tribe and did not remember her life before being taken captive, so Kidd had to very slowly re-introduce her to her old life and ways.  They encountered difficulties on the journey and as they went on they began to get close to each other.

Jiles does a great job letting the reader get to know the characters intimately.  It's touching story and told well.  I loved the writing in this book.

"Maybe life is just carrying news.  Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed."