Extremely evocative of an innocent, simpler time. Our guide and bearer of news from the world after the civil war, Jefferson Kidd, is a wise, brave, grumpy grandfather and widower. The diverse characters that come in and out of his life are intriguingly rendered by Jiles, to the point that she must satisfy the reader's curiosity, explaining the fate of them all in detail. And Kidd's sidekick, Johanna, is rendered in such detail that her internal, unspoken struggle brought me to tears as I read out loud to my parents. My mother and father had to repeatedly take over for me when I got choked up. And the intellectual linguist in you will delight at the intricate explanations of the Kiowa language and culture, not to mention the now arcane language of preindustrial Texas and the southeastern US. Normally this would be a 5-star for me. The only detractor is the relatively basic and cliche writing of the first few chapters, as Jiles sucks in the average reader, before unleashing the spoils of her research on the persistent reader in the later chapters. She does eventually unleash her deeper creativity and illuminates the human condition without cliche or boring soundbites. Hang in there. The journey is worth the knocks of the bumpy road at the start.