Product Description

In 1863, the War Between the States creeps slowly yet inevitably toward its bloody conclusion—and eastern thoughts are already turning to different wars and enemies.

Searching for a life and future, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson is venturing west into unknown territory with his wife, Mary, and their three children—wary but undeterred by sobering tales of atrocities inflicted upon those who trespass against the Comanche and the Kiowa. Settling on the Texas plains, the Johnson family hopes to build on the dreams that carried them from the Confederate South to this new land of possibility—dreams that are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the settlement while Britt is away establishing a business. Returning to face the unthinkable—his friends and neighbors slain or captured, his eldest son dead, his beloved Mary severely damaged and 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.

Samuel Hammond follows a different road west. A Quaker whose fortune is destroyed by a capricious act of an inscrutable God, he has resigned himself to the role the Deity has chosen for him. As a new agent for the Office of Indian Affairs, it is Hammond's goal to ferret out corruption and win justice for the noble natives now in his charge. But the proud, stubborn people refuse to cease their raids, free their prisoners, and accept the farming implements and lifestyle the white man would foist upon them, adding fuel to smoldering tensions that threaten to turn a man of peace, faith, and reason onto a course of terrible retribution.

A soaring work of the imagination based on oral histories of the post–Civil War years in North Texas, Paulette Jiles's The Color of Lightning is at once an intimate look into the hearts and hopes of tragically flawed human beings and a courageous reexamination of a dark American history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #251139 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-01
• Released on: 2009-03-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061690440
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
The author of Stormy Weather and Enemy Women returns with a lively exploration of revenge, dedication and betrayal set mainly in Kentucky and Texas near the end of the Civil War. Britt Johnson is a free black man traveling with a larger band of white settlers in search of a better life for his wife, Mary, and their children, despite the many perils of the journey itself. After a war party of 700 Comanche and Kiowa scalp, rape and murder many of the whites, Mary and her children get separated from Britt and become the property of a Native named Gonkon. Britt must wait through the winter before he can set out to rescue and reclaim his wife and children, only to discover that not only does he not have enough money to bargain with the Indians but also that his own family's fate has as much to do with land disputes and treaties as it does with his determination to get revenge. Jiles writes like she owns the frontier, and in this multifaceted, riveting and full of danger novel, she does. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Starred Review. As the Civil War winds down, freed slave Britt Johnson moves his wife and three children to Young County, TX. He dreams of starting a freight business, and his wife wants to teach school. But when the Comanche and Kiowa come raiding, Britt is not there to defend his family; his oldest son is killed, and the rest of his family and neighbors are taken captive. Britt spends a long winter plotting how to rescue them. Samuel Hammond, a Quaker man from Philadelphia, is sent to the region to be the new Indian Agent. He holds high ideals about nonviolence and teaching the Indians an agrarian lifestyle. Riveting suspense builds as Britt journeys north toward Indian country and encounters many Indian captives who do not want to be re-Anglicized. Using as her basis true histories of the Johnson family and others, Jiles (Stormy Weather) paints a stirring, panoramic tale of the young, troubled state of Texas. Highly recommended for historical fiction fans and readers who enjoy original Westerns. [Prepub Alert, LJ 12/08.]—Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston, TX
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Carolyn See "They were lethal and beautiful and they had come bearing the mystery of death for mankind to puzzle over." The author is evoking the Kiowa raids in North Texas, around 1870. Making their last appearance in this novel, the warriors are just about to kill off Britt Johnson, a freed black man who has become something of a hero in these parts, and two of his luckless friends. But by this point in this meticulously researched and beautifully crafted story, we have seen so much of the Kiowa and the Comanche, spent so much time inside their camps, gotten to know their head men so well, that it's no longer a simple question of "cowboys and Indians" but the culmination of a terrible cultural misunderstanding in which neither side will come out exactly a winner. "The Color of Lightning" begins a couple of years before the end of the Civil War. Britt Johnson -- based on a real historical character -- his wife, Mary, and their three kids have been freed, and they, along with Britt's former master, move to North Texas to escape the complications of the deep South, which they know will be poisoned and dangerous even after the fighting ends. They fetch up in almost deserted country at the edge of the Great Plains. They build houses, settle down and believe, naively enough, that along with their widely scattered neighbors, they will be able to live peaceful lives. They have not reckoned with what's left of the Plains Indians, who have been instructed by a U.S. government treaty to stay north of the Red River and to stay out of trouble. But the Indians aren't in the habit of doing what they're told, and in their first terrifying raid, they kill off Britt's older son and abduct his wife and two other children, along with another woman and a child or two. They leave havoc in their wake; their behavior has been barbarous, to put it mildly, and the new settlers, both black and white, are left dazed by grief and fury. How could human beings, even so-called savages, behave in this way? In Larry McMurtry's masterpiece, "Lonesome Dove," the action occurs in more or less the same place, about 10 years earlier. Gus and Captain Call, former Texas Rangers, have killed their share of Indians, and Gus will finally be felled by them, but the point of view in that estimable novel is strictly limited. We see the Indians only through the eyes of ex-Rangers. Here, Paulette Jiles, who has done hell's own amount of research on these tribes and especially the captives they took, follows right along with the Kiowa after that first raid, and we learn, as do Mary and her children, what it took to survive and eventually to flourish as captives. Meanwhile, because governments are always goofy and the U.S. government particularly so, it has been decided back East that the best people to mediate with Indian tribes are members of religious denominations. In a stunningly ignorant move, the Kiowa and the Comanche -- the most violent tribes, at least by reputation -- are placed under the supervision of the Quakers, to whom violence is anathema. Samuel Hammond, a Quaker who has already volunteered to drive an ambulance during the war, has begun to question a good part of his faith in God and the inherent goodness of man. He heads west in supreme innocence. His appointed task is to "improve" the lot of Indians by giving them farming tools and woolen business suits and chamber pots. He aims to show them how to live peacefully on the reservation, to build houses and to refrain from scalping or disemboweling their neighbors. The Indians don't go for any of this. They think it's crazy to live in houses and even crazier to plow the earth. They don't plan to stop raiding; they've been doing it since the beginning of time. And everyone knows they've always taken captives; what's the big deal? The main plot thrust here has to do with Britt Johnson's clever and audacious rescues of his wife and children, and then of another woman and child. He's a remarkable man, caught between hostile Indians on one side and racist whites on the other. But the larger story is about the utter failure of the two cultures to understand each other. I'm sure I'm biased about this novel. My great grandparents were Dallas pioneers, and I'm crazy about this material. But I think, objectively as well, that this is glorious work.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Solid, responsible, eloquent, quietly epic historical fiction
The stories of a number of characters on the Texas frontier during the period immediately following the Civil War: a recently-freed African American teamster and his wife and children; a Quaker Indian agent; a white woman captured by the Kiowa tribe but eventually rescued; several Native American characters appear as well. What I loved about this novel was the quality of reflection about the characters, the careful differentiation of their inner thoughts (and the fact that the characters are drawn very differently), the way in which the author puts her characters in the path of conflict, and the portrayal of the irresolvable nature of cultural negotiation along the border between U.S. settlement and the retreating Native American nations. Tremendously well-written, with a very concrete feel to the prose, the book is a joy to read. Also, the author very clearly relied for background material on the most uptodate scholarship in the field, so while there are occasional slips, for the most part historical narrative about cowboys and Indians is avoided.

Shining a light on an obscure footnote of history
"The Color of Lightning" is a novelized account of the lives of real people and actual events in the Texas of the 1860s and the surrounding Indian Territory. Very literately written, it tells of Britt and Mary Johnson, a black couple who settle in Texas as freed slaves, and their children; Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a ranch widow of indomitable spirit; and Samuel Hammond, a Quaker hired to manage the Indian agency which ministers to the Comanche and Kiowa, who don't want white ways pressed on them. Samuel is one of the few fictionalized people in the book; most characters here actually existed.

In the hours when the men are away on a freighting job, the Johnson and Fitzgerald homesteads are descended upon by Comanche and Kiowa together. The women are brutalized, the children are either snatched up or killed, and the survivors are kidnapped away. Upon his return from freighting, Britt sets about going after them, doing so in a measured, thought-out manner, nothing brash or unconsidered. His coolness is what helps him survive many touchy situations.

Very well written and researched, the author, Paulette Jiles, presents a vivid story of a wild time in the history of that locale. She shows clearly the obtuseness of those running the agencies, with their pigheaded insistence on their own way, the white way, not trying to understand a people who have managed quite well, thank you, without learning outside ways, for centuries. There is a bit of pigheadedness on that side as well, in that the tribes stolidly refused to see that what was coming, as sad as it was, was inevitable.

Interestingly, I read an account of this incident the very day I started this book, in a Western publication, and was surprised to discover the authenticity of the story. The incident itself sparked a movie called "The Searchers" a few decades ago, with a Hollywoodized cast; the truth got a little lost in the shuffle. This book comes much closer to the truth, and is recommended highly, especially for readers interested in the Texas of that era and the lost glory days of the Comanche and Kiowa Nations.

TO READ THIS IS BOTH PRIVILEGE AND PLEASURE
To read the work of Paulette Jiles is both a privilege and a pleasure. Reviewing her debut novel, Enemy Women, I described her prose as artful, her story painful in its authenticity yet poetically rendered, and the book as one that would not be forgotten. I would echo those sentiments regarding The Color Of Lightning. An acclaimed poet and memorist, her literary voice haunts as she explores the plight of humanity in its progress.

Once again she turns to pages from our history to bring us an imagined story, yet one based on prodigious research, documentation, and oral history. Set in post-Civil War North Texas it is the morning of October 13, 1864 when Britt Johnson, a freed-man, is preparing his team of horses to go to Weatherford for supplies. He leaves behind his wife, Mary, and their two youngest children. Stopping along the way he leaves his eldest son, Jim, at the Fitzgerald home for a visit.

While Britt is away "...a combined force of seven hundred Comanche and Kiowa poured down into what the white people knew as Young County. Mary and the children are captured by the Kiowa, while Elizabeth Fitzgerald and her granddaughter are seized by the Comanches. They were, it seemed at the time, more fortunate than Susan Durgan whose "scalp and its tangled brown hair bounced on the pommel of a man named Eaten Alive." Thus, Britt's odyssey begins, a search for his family across unfriendly, unfamiliar terrain often in enemy territory.

In a parallel story Samuel Hammond, a Philadelphia Quaker, is delegated by the Society of Friends to go West as the Indian agent, to befriend and teach the Comanche and Kiowa, to give them goods, calico, muslin, rations of beef, farming implements, as if these "would bring order and obedience." And then they would be happy to live on a reservation.

It is also his task to rescue those taken captive and return them to their families, little knowing that some seized as children have no wish to return, in fact fear what they do not remember or understand. Later, a young girl called Good Medicine is brought to him. When he reassures her that now she will not go hungry, he realizes it is not starvation she fears but "She was afraid of the slow death of confinement. Of being trapped inside immovable houses and stiff clothing.....She could not go out at dawn alone and sing, she would not be seen and known by the rising sun."

There is a great deal of beauty in Jiles's book and large portions of truth. Questions that today remain unanswered.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke