News of the World by Paulette Jiles
I first read Paulette Jiles years ago, when I stumbled on Enemy Women at my bookstore. I was gobsmacked by that novel, and it remains one of my favorite Civil War novels. I've had an advanced reader's copy of this book for a few years. I was excited to read it, but somehow lost my enthusiasm about 30 pages into it, put it down, and didn't pick it up again until last week. I deliberately picked it for my book group this month so I would finally read it. It's only a few hundred pages; easy enough, right? Read it in one sitting. Yet it still took me the better part of a week to read, and my only thought about that is because I liked Captain Kidd and Johanna so much I didn't want anything to happen to them on their journey. I just couldn't bear to read a passage that would endanger, injure, or tear Johanna away from the Captain. So that very reason kept me from reading it a few years ago, and had me taking a week to read a book I could have read in...