Questions from Harper Collins Readers Guide:
1. Discuss Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd’s work as a newspaper reader. What does he bring to his audience, and what does he gain from his work besides financial compensation?
2. Why does Kidd accept the difficult job of returning Johanna home? What drives him to complete the job despite the danger and obstacles?
3. Why do you think Johanna wants to stay with her Kiowa family? What do you think she remembers of her life before she was taken?
4. What connects Kidd to Johanna? Why does she seem to trust him so easily?
5. What does Kidd worry may become of Johanna once she’s returned to her family? What does he know of the fate of other “returned captives”?
6. Doris Dillion says that Johanna is “carried away on the flood of the world...not real and not not-real.” She describes her as having “been through two creations” and “forever falling.” Do you agree with her assessment? Does Johanna remain this way through the course of the novel?
7. Discuss the various tensions in the novel: Indians and whites; soldiers and civilizations; America’s recent past and its unsure future. In what ways do these tensions underlie the story of Kidd and Johanna?
8. Imagine the perspective of Johanna’s Kiowa family. Why, do you think, they would’ve taken her in and raise her? Why would they give her up? How do you think they felt when they let her go?
9. Discuss the troubling moment when Johanna wanted to scalp her fallen enemy. How did that make you feel about her?
10. Partway through his journey with Johanna, Kidd feels as though he was “drawn back into the stream of being because there was once again life in his hands.” What do you think this means? What does it tell you about Kidd’s emotional life?
Questions from Lit Lovers:
1. Talk about the ways in which Johanna Leonberger's life among the Kiowa Indians has shaped her identity, for better and for worse.
2. Captain Kidd is reluctant at first to be saddled with Johanna. What changes his mind: why does he agree to take her to San Antonio? What does it say about the kind of man he is? What kind of man, in fact, is he?
3. How does Paulette Jiles depict post-Civil War Texas? What kind of place is it? Talk about the landscape and the type of people Johanna and Captain Kidd encounter. Also, consider the effects of the Civil War on the populace: is the war actually over?
4. Trace the development of the bond that develops between Johanna and Kidd. What cements their relationship? Whom do you think benefits more from the other? Or is their relationship equally symbiotic?
5. Captain Kidd makes a living traveling through north Texas, reading the news to audiences who pay to hear hear him. Obviously, the novel's title refers to this activity, but what else might "the news of the world" refer to in the novel?
6. All literary journeys follow the arc of the hero's journey. How does this novel adhere to that ancient narrative? Who is the hero—and in what way? How do both Johanna and Kidd change or grow as individuals during the course of their travels?
7. Where you satisfied by the novel's ending? Does Captain Kidd do the right thing for Johanna? Would you have made the same choice, or a different one?