‘Giver of Stars’ relates how books help bring freedom
What a joyful New Year’s celebration to wildly and enthusiastically recommend British writer Jojo Moyes’ latest book, “The Giver of Stars.”
If you love books, courageous women, libraries and horses, you will find this story about the pack horse librarians of Kentucky hard to put down. It begins with the Great Depression and President Roosevelt’s New Deal program, originally called the Works Progress Administration in 1935 and renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939.
Eleanor Roosevelt came up with the idea of the Pack Horse Library Project, a program of book lending for the mountain people of Kentucky – one of the most depressed states.
Moyes’ story begins in London, where an independent and feisty young woman, Alice, meets Bennett Van Cleve, the young son of an American mining magnate from Kentucky. The handsome young man proposes and, in Alice’s determination to escape the confines of her London family, she marries him. She moves not to cosmopolitan New York or even Louisville, Ky., but ends up in the small mining town of Baileyville, surrounded by the Appalachian Mountains.
Alice is totally unprepared for this rural life, and the folks in town are equally unprepared for Alice with her so very British ways. Instead of an exciting life of freedom, Alice finds herself trapped in her father-in-law’s large home and what soon becomes a loveless marriage.
It is not until she volunteers to be a part of the Pack Horse Librarian Project that Alice begins to find a passion for a life of independence. Moyes spent time in Appalachia on horseback and in conversation with the folk who lived in the same small towns and far away mountain cabins as those in “The Giver of Stars.” Moyes creates characters, women and men, to admire and cheer for and others to fear and despise.
At the novel’s heart is the power of books to move mountains and heal hearts and culture. It takes place at a time when women had few choices. Under the powerful influence of her father-in-law, Alice faces a culture that believes a woman’s only place is in the home. The five women most present in the story find their strength and influence as pack horse librarians.
The story is filled with heart, danger, surprising laughter, politics, and unexpected twists and turns. It should send many readers to Google to find out all they can about this remarkable project, which lasted beyond the years of the New Deal.
The book’s title, “The Giver of Stars,” is aptly taken from a poem by Amy Lowell, and once read, you will understand why it was chosen.
“The Giver of Stars” says as much about the grateful Kentuckians, adults and children, whose lives were as touched by the books as by the women who delivered them on horseback.
Sunny Solomon is a freelance writer and head of the Clayton Book Club. Visit her website at bookinwithsunny.com for her latest recommendations or just to “talk books.”