Simon the Fiddler

Simon the Fiddler is a 2020 novel by Paulette Jiles. Paulette Jiles is a poet, memoirist, and novelist; she has been publishing her works since 1973. Her works reflect her interest and academic success in history, particularly the history of Texas; additionally, she has worked in Canada to set up native-language radio stations for Indigenous peoples such as the Ojibwe. The protagonists, Simon and Doris, appear briefly in the novel for which Jiles was a 2016 National Book Award Finalist, News of the World, making it something of a spiritual prequel. Simon the Fiddler tells Simon’s story through and after the Civil War as he fights to navigate the unsteady, violent postwar Texan landscape and free Doris, an Irish immigrant, from her indentured servanthood under a cruel family.

This study guide uses the William Morrow paperback, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, published in 2020.

Content Warning: The source material contains themes of war, violence, and sexual assault. Some passages use slurs or dated language to reflect the realities of the time period.

Plot Summary

Simon Boudlin, the protagonist, is a young man in his 20s who, due to his height and appearance, can pass for a teenager. He uses this misconception to evade conscription into the Confederate army. He makes his living by playing the fiddle across Texas, often relying on the help of others to escape army officers. After a bar fight in March 1865, the army forces him into service in a camp in the Rio Grande.

Simon meets Damon Lessing, a tin whistle player, in the army’s regimental band. Federal troops attack the camp, leading to a surrender; Simon’s fiddle goes missing in the violence, and he finds it in the hands of a Union soldier, whom he attacks. Simon is given back his fiddle and forced to play for the surrender ceremony; he and the other men dress like civilians, hoping to get paid and escape the military freely afterward.

At the ceremony, a beautiful governess in the Union Colonel’s household distracts Simon. He asks the ladies what music they want to hear, and she suggests an Irish song; Colonel Webb pushes her away, sparking Simon’s wrath. Simon tries to get information about her while he gathers money; he learns that her name is Doris Dillon. The next day, he plays the same Irish song for her by the roadside as the Webbs leave.

Most members of the cobbled-together band—Simon, Doroteo, Patrick, and Damon— escape the army and head in a boat to Galveston, Texas, facing dehydration and rough seas in the Gulf. They find an abandoned house to live in and begin to find jobs playing music to pay for new clothes and food. Simon uses a young Irish boy in the band, Patrick, as an excuse to write to Doris.

A rich family, the Pryors, invites the band to play. Simon plays a song for the Creole servant girl to remind her of her lover in New Orleans, earning the band food in recompense. The Pryor daughter, Miss Pryor, invites Simon into the house under the pretense of showing him a song and asks him to move with the family to St. Louis as her tutor. He refuses, insisting that he likes his life, and kisses her; she gives him her handkerchief. Doris, meanwhile, is traveling to San Antonio with the Webbs and enjoying the foreign beauty of the Texas landscape. The Webbs are cruel to her.

Simon goes to inquire about land, wanting to buy land to impress and support Doris. He does not trust the agent selling the land but falls in love with a large plot of dangerous land on the Red River; he decides to find the owner. Solomon Bradford. Soon after, Patrick falls ill with yellow fever and dies gruesomely. The band leaves for Houston, grieving him.

Unable to find work in Houston due to their dirty appearances, Simon, Doroteo, and Damon take other jobs but slowly grow weak from hunger. They kill an alligator and sell the body for enough money to buy necessities and clean themselves up, and then begin to get jobs playing music again. The Colonel orders Simon to stop writing to Doris, so he writes to her through the Webbs’ Mexican maid instead.

A man approaches the band and asks them to play at the wedding of Solomon Bradford’s granddaughter in the dangerous Nueces Strip. Recognizing the name as the owner of the land he wants, Simon takes the job. Solomon Bradford’s memory is fading, but Simon plays him a song from West Virginia and clears his mind; they settle on a deal for the land. After the wedding, Doroteo decides to stay in the Nueces Strip, his hometown, so Damon and Simon continue to San Antonio alone.

Simon and Damon find a job at a hotel in San Antonio and pick up an untrustworthy musician to replace Doroteo. Simon finds Doris in the market and spends as much time with her as he can, expressing his feelings for her; they must act in secret, as the Colonel has forbidden her from seeing men. Doris reveals that the Colonel has tried to assault her, and she is trying to earn money to return to Ireland. They begin to use their mutual musical abilities—Doris with the piano, Simon with the fiddle—to meet at houses in the area. Josephine Webb, the Colonel’s daughter, tells her father that Doris has been sneaking around, and Colonel Webb tries to punish Doris for her behavior, calling out Simon specifically.

Mrs. Webb inadvertently hires Simon to play at their tea-dance, and he and the Colonel nearly come into conflict over Doris. Simon steps off the stage to dance with Doris, and the Colonel refuses to pay him, even hitting him with the money bag afterward when he implies that he knows that the Colonel is trying to rape Doris. Doris prepares to elope with Simon, and Simon fires the untrustworthy musician, Pruitt, for his behavior.

The next day, Pruitt returns to the hotel and demands a crude song; Doris appears to warn Simon that the Colonel is trying to arrest him, but Pruitt grabs her. Simon attacks Pruitt and Pruitt nearly guts him, but Simon stabs him with his fiddle bow, killing him. Simon is arrested, and the Colonel hires a man to kill him in prison; the sheriff cooperates with this and breaks Simon’s fiddle. Simon narrowly survives.

The next day, a lieutenant takes Simon and Doris to the justice of the peace and marries them so that Doris cannot testify in Simon’s trial. The lieutenant serves as Simon’s defense and uses the fiddle and the sheriff’s complacency to earn the judge’s pity and favor. Simon is acquitted successfully, and he and Doris spend their wedding night patching up his many injuries.