When I need something a little light but also well-written, it is a pleasure to turn to a new Moyes novel, or an older one that I haven’t yet read. Call her a guilty pleasure, I guess. Her latest is set in the early 1930s in rural Kentucky and has particular appeal as it is based on the real-life story of women who served as “packhorse librarians” during the Depression. This was a WPA program, promoted by Eleanor Roosevelt, to bring literacy, knowledge, and just plain entertainment to the often desperately poor residents of coal-mining Appalachia by way of circuit riding librarians on horseback. When the son of a local coal baron meets Alice Wright during a visit to England, he falls in love and marries her, bringing her back to Kentucky. Alice had been a bit of a trial to her parents because of her willfulness and independence, so they were relieved to have her safely off their hands and an ocean away. But this isn’t mint-julep drinking city life Alice had imagined, rather like a "permanent Derby Day." She and her new husband live with his widowed and imperious father in a small, tight-knit town far from genteel civilization. This a disappointment, one that Alice is prepared to make the best of, but her husband seems oddly distant and the town unfriendly to her. The one friend she makes is the even more independent and odd Margery O’Hare, who takes charge of the traveling librarians, who Alice eagerly joins. She soon learns to love the wildness and beauty of her new homeland, and to appreciate the lives she touches with her book deliveries. There will be blood feuds, floods, mining accidents, and a mysterious death before a happily ever-after ending for most. Fun. 390 pp.
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
The giver of stars, by Jojo Moyes
When I need something a little light but also well-written, it is a pleasure to turn to a new Moyes novel, or an older one that I haven’t yet read. Call her a guilty pleasure, I guess. Her latest is set in the early 1930s in rural Kentucky and has particular appeal as it is based on the real-life story of women who served as “packhorse librarians” during the Depression. This was a WPA program, promoted by Eleanor Roosevelt, to bring literacy, knowledge, and just plain entertainment to the often desperately poor residents of coal-mining Appalachia by way of circuit riding librarians on horseback. When the son of a local coal baron meets Alice Wright during a visit to England, he falls in love and marries her, bringing her back to Kentucky. Alice had been a bit of a trial to her parents because of her willfulness and independence, so they were relieved to have her safely off their hands and an ocean away. But this isn’t mint-julep drinking city life Alice had imagined, rather like a "permanent Derby Day." She and her new husband live with his widowed and imperious father in a small, tight-knit town far from genteel civilization. This a disappointment, one that Alice is prepared to make the best of, but her husband seems oddly distant and the town unfriendly to her. The one friend she makes is the even more independent and odd Margery O’Hare, who takes charge of the traveling librarians, who Alice eagerly joins. She soon learns to love the wildness and beauty of her new homeland, and to appreciate the lives she touches with her book deliveries. There will be blood feuds, floods, mining accidents, and a mysterious death before a happily ever-after ending for most. Fun. 390 pp.
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