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Books|Paulette Jiles, 82, Dies; Novelist Evoked the West in ‘News of the World’
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/books/paulette-jiles-dead.html
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A poet and memoirist as well, she drew a wide readership with her historical fiction, notably with a Civil War-era tale that was adapted for a movie starring Tom Hanks.
July 16, 2025Updated 7:12 p.m. ET
Paulette Jiles, a horse-riding poet who wrote historical novels that evoked the grit and natural grandeur of the 19th-century American West, notably in “News of the World,” in which a Civil War veteran and a 10-year-old girl embark on a 400-mile journey in search of the girl’s relatives, died on July 8 in San Antonio. She was 82.
Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her step-granddaughter, Faith Elaine Lowry, who said the cause was gastric complications. Ms. Jiles disclosed in a blog post in June that she had been diagnosed with “some kind of nonalcoholic cirrhosis of the liver.”
Ms. Jiles published six books of poetry, two memoirs and nine novels. Together, more than a million copies of her works have been sold in the United States, according to BookScan, a sales tracking system.
Her novels drew inspiration from Civil War-era history and from her own horseback trail rides through Missouri and the Southwest as she explored the region’s fraught past in granular and seemingly lived-in detail, often through long, perilous journeys that her characters undertake.
Her writing coupled extensive research with austere prose, snappy dialogue and textured characters who reappear from book to book, offering continuity to devoted readers.
One character, based on a real historical figure, is the rugged and honorable Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, the Civil War veteran from “News of the World” (2016) who makes a living keeping a frontier public informed by reading aloud to them from newspapers. He becomes roped into a wildly hazardous journey from Wichita Falls, Texas, to San Antonio to return a stoic German girl to her relatives after she is recaptured by U.S. soldiers from the Kiowa tribe.
