Simon the Fiddler

February 1, 2020
Jiles follows up National Book Award finalist News of the World (2016, etc.) with another atmospheric adventure in post-Civil War Texas. During his few reluctant months in the Confederate Army, Simon Boudlin's main concerns are staying alive and protecting his precious fiddle so that after the war he can make enough money to buy some land and settle down with the right woman. He sees her after his unit surrenders, at a dinner for the officers: Doris Dillon is an Irish indentured servant to Yankee Col. Webb, and by the time Simon learns her name he already knows that Webb is an arrogant SOB who mistreats the help and is nasty to musicians. That's the last Simon sees of Doris for more than a year, as he forms a band with fellow veterans (three of the novel's many deft characterizations) and they play their way across Texas, technically under military rule but mostly in a state of near anarchy; the musicians' gigs, brilliantly captured in Jiles' quiet but resonant prose, are as likely to end in a brawl as with applause. Simon and his mates bunk down in stolen boats and shelled-out buildings that make visible the cost of war, but magnificent descriptions of their travels make palpable the varied beauty of the landscape, from East Texas pines to the banks of the Nueces River, where Simon plays at a wild Tejano wedding and finally has enough money to buy his dreamed-of land. He's been in touch with Doris via letters supposedly from his Irish-American drummer, Patrick, who helpfully invents some shared relatives, and is making his way toward San Antonio to rescue his beloved, who's finding it increasingly difficult to evade Webb's determined advances. The pace picks up and tension rises after Simon reaches San Antonio; there are some menacing moments, but clever plotting has laid the groundwork for a happy ending with just enough hints of potential troubles ahead to remain true to Jiles' loving but cleareyed portrait of Texas' vibrant, violent frontier culture. Vividly evocative and steeped in American folkways: more great work from a master storyteller.

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February 17, 2020
Jiles’s gritty and richly atmospheric seventh novel returns to the post–Civil War Texas she explored in News of the World. In the last year of the war, 23-year-old Simon Boudlin, an orphan musician from Kentucky who has avoided a stint in the Confederate Army, is rounded up by a couple of conscription men. After the war concludes, his body and fiddle still relatively intact, Simon and some friends are commissioned to play for a formal dinner for Confederate and Union officers at Fort Brown, Tex. There he is dazzled by Doris Dillon, the Irish governess for Colonel Webb of the Union Army, and determines that he will somehow buy some land and make her his bride. Simon and Doris trade letters over the next couple of years as he and his friends become “creatures of gaslight and shadows,” traveling around coastal Texas for stray saloon gigs, and Doris works off her indentured servitude for the Webbs in San Antonio and fends off unwelcome advances from the colonel. When Simon finally makes his way to Doris, trouble ensues. Jiles immerses the reader in the sensory details of the era, with special emphasis on the demands and rewards of a ragtag Texas fiddle band. Jiles’s limber tale satisfies with welcome splashes of comedy and romance.

Starred review from February 1, 2020
After leaving a Confederate regimental band, Simon Boudlin finds himself in Texas with the twin goals of buying land and courting Doris Dillon, a young Irish governess. After catching Doris's eye at one of the band's last outings, Simon lands in Galveston while Doris continues her service to a colonel's family. The Civil War wasn't particularly kind to Simon, but starting a new band with other displaced musicians hasn't been easy, either. After scraping together enough paying gigs to keep themselves clothed and fed, the band begins to land a few higher-paying jobs. When an appealing piece of property catches Simon's attention, he begins a mission to capture Doris' heart, settle down, and continue his musical career. Imbued with the dust, grit, and grime of Galveston at the close of the Civil War, Simon the Fiddler immerses readers in the challenges of Reconstruction. Jiles (News of the World, 2016) brings her singular voice to the young couple's travails, her written word as lyrical and musical as Simon's bow raking over his strings. Loyal Jiles readers and fans of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See (2014), and Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge (2008) will adore the author's latest masterpiece.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2019

Throughout the Civil War, wispy, unpunctilious Simon Boudlin has avoided conscription, but a barroom brawl in Texas lands him in the Confederate Army just as the fighting wanes. An expert fiddler, he's assigned to the regimental band and ends up playing for officers from both sides on the eve of Confederate surrender. There he spots Doris Mary Aherne, an indentured Irish girl who serves as governess to a Union colonel's daughter, and he swears he will do whatever he must to find her after the war. Following News of the World, a National Book Award finalist slated for the silver screen; with a 250,000-copy first printing.

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