The Color of Lightning audiobook

I don't often go back and reread a sentence just because it is so beautiful, but I found myself doing just that while reading THE COLOR OF LIGHTNING. The author is a poet as well as a memoirist and novelist, and it shows. Let me set up this sentence for you. It is December of 1870 in North Texas. A man is standing in dense fog, trying to be totally silent, because he knows that a Kiowa or Comanche is nearby, as he heard the voice singing and chanting a song of grief. The man may not be able to see anything because of the fog, but sounds are magnified. And so he stands, motionless, waiting. "He saw a drop of moisture on his hat brim appear and then grow pendant with a condensed seed of light from the pale fog in its center, and then it dropped."I could read about a garbage truck and love it with writing this beautiful, but when the story is a gripping, suspenseful historical fiction, I'm absolutely hooked.Thank you, Ms. Jiles, for this book.

Eloquent, illuminating tale about frontier life in Northern Texas between 1864-1871. Based on a true story, this novel is also graphic and bloody (take note: not for the queasy) in its descriptions of the capture and dispatching of frontierspeople by Kiowa and Comanche. One of the things I loved about the story was its realism. The violence was completely necessary, in my opinion, to fully understanding the story and the relationships of the characters. The author was fully adept in describing the problematic relationship of the Native Americans of the Plains and the settlers. Each committed atrocities, each came from different worlds, clashes were inevitable. All of the characters were interesting: Britt Johnson, ex-slave from Kentucky; his wife Mary; his son, who is coming of age when he is captured; Samuel, sent from the most nonviolent sect (Quaker) to be agent to two of the most violent, nomadic tribes settlers would ever clash with.... An incredible, well-researched story based on truth by a talented author, who sympathizes with & respects her characters.

Do you know why the rainbow is infinite in its scope of color? Because all colors are contained within white light -- the stuff the prism of a raindrop separates -- the stuff that lightning is made of -- the stuff this American story is made of. Awesome read! And, I know that my attention was captivated because Jiles stuck to authentic American History... terrifying, bloody, and tribal from every racial point of view. Indian. African. Mexican. Canadian. French. Spanish. English. Asian. German. Irish. Italian. And all the rest. Jiles didn't miss a drop of blood in the creation of the American DNA. The Color of Lightning is the color of the American -- as seen through the prism of a drop of our blood.

The Color of Lightning is a great companion novel for News of the World. If you liked News of the World, in this novel, Paulette Jiles has written another story which illuminates that period of time which followed the Civil War as settlers moved west away from the Old South and into territories formerly inhabited by Native Americans. Although I read them in reverse order, this book actually precedes Mews of the World. Of note, Captain Kidd makes a cameo appearance in this novel, and, although I don’t recall it, Britt Johnson apparently made a cameo appearance in News of the World.The novel is based on a true story. The hero of the book is Britt Johnson, a free black man who loses his wife and family in a Comanche- Kiowa raid while he is away. His oldest son is killed. His wife and three children are taken as captives along with another mother and her child. Britt’s mission is to recover these people.The writing is skillful. This is a book that will make you shake your head. It will tell you about the displacement of native Americans from their home lands and, at the same time, about the atrocities committed by them against the invading white settlers. One very fascinating aspect of the story is to learn about the experiences of the captives taken, women and young children, and their adaptations to Native American life. As in News of the World, there are those captives who may have preferred not to be retrieved. I found Chapter Two difficult to read. I think it is a tribute to Jiles that she can write something so cinematic that I wanted to hide my eyes from the words on the page — something I routinely do in movies that are visually violent. It shouldn’t stop you, though, from reading this story, especially if you have family history related to these areas of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. This was a Buddy Read with a small group of readers from a Goodread group. We have read several historical novels which describe the settling of the American West. It is genre which has become more interesting to me as I have a long standing family history project and I can relate the migrations of several branches as they moved across the United States from the East Coast to the West. I look forward to reading more by Paulette Jiles with this group.

This is a wonderful historical based in North Texas at the end of the Civil War. It's based on a man named Britt Johnson, a freed slave who brought his family to Texas to make a new life. The author is a poet and her prose is lovely. The story is compelling and Britt is a larger than life character. There was a movie loosely based on his story called The Searchers starring John Wayne. I wish it could be remade with black actors. In the right hands it would make a great film. I really loved this book.