La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Before Tom Hanks rode through post-Civil War Texas on his rescue mission bringing the 10-years old Johanna to her grandparents south of San Antonio in the film “News of the World,” there was Paulette Jiles’ 2016 novel. Her protagonist, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, was older than the century, having been born in 1798. He had first seen war in 1812 and lived through it again in 1846 in Mexico.

Kidd was old, 72, and thoughtful and wise, not merely because he had experienced war three times, but because he was a printer in an era when every letter was molded out of hot lead and each word...