The Color of Lightning

by Paulette Jiles
Category: "Fiction - Western"
Pages:346
Year of Publication:2009
Date Added:03/08/2023
Date Read:01/22/2024
Notes:A novel, based on real people and events, about a freed Black man named Britt Johnson who took his wife and three children to Texas during the Civil War. The Kiowa and Comanches attack, kill one of his sons, and take his wife Mary and other children captive—along with a neighboring White woman named Elizabeth Fitzgerald and her two children. Mary and Elizabeth are repeatedly raped. Mary is hit in the head with a rock and loses the ability to speak. Britt travels to find them and buys them back, then returns and buys Elizabeth and one of her children. The captives had trouble reverting to civilized ways. Britt sets up a freight business and is doing well when he and his crew are killed by attacking Indians. The book also includes the story of Samuel Hammond, a Quaker Indian agent who is frustrated by the failure of his attempts to deal with the Indians peacefully. When they continue to attack the Texas settlements, take scalps, and take captives, Hammond finally gives to Army orders to arrest the perpetrators. He then resigns his post.
My Rating: 5

Reviews for The Color of Lightning

Review - Color of Lightning, The

I didn't care for this as much as I have Jiles' other books. The story didn't really hang together as a novel because there was no resolution so far as the main characters were concerned. Britt Johnson was a real man who went west and set up a freighting business, rescued his family, and was killed. Jiles made it into a novel because there isn't enough known about Johnson for a biography, but this wasn't the answer. And Samuel Hammond wasn't real but was just a type of what Quakers would have to deal with. Interestingly, it doesn't really portray the Indians in a very good light.

Reviewed by Roger on 2024-01-22 13:43:38

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