Thanks to the Women

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m always fascinated by books about books and libraries; this Reese Witherspoon Bookclub pick focuses more on the librarians and the freedom literacy can bring.
It’s the distressing 1930s, in between the wars, and listless socialite Alice is excited to marry handsome Bennett Van Cleve, who’s in England on a ministry trip with his coalmine-owning father. She’s going to live in America!
What she finds when she arrives is that she’s not going to live in a vibrant city, but a small town in rural Kentucky, which feels more like prison to her than the life she was escaping.
Alice is surrounded by strangers and by poverty, both material and emotional, that she’s never experienced and never before seen. But Alice isn’t shallow from her life of privilege—just ignorant—and this is her coming of age story.
The Federal Works Project Administration has funded the Pack Horse Library Project and in defiance of her father-in-law, she’s joined the project as a librarian along with four other women, pledging to deliver books throughout the hills and hollers of Appalachia.
Alice’s father-in-law believes women have no place outside the home, and no rights within it. He believes that might and money make right. Miners all over the country are trying to unionize out of their terribly unsafe working conditions, and literate hillbillies don’t sign papers that allow themselves to be evicted off their own land. Van Cleve is threatened by the change happening all around him and will hire anything done to stop it; he fixates on Margery, the local free spirit that’s heading the charge for change. This creates most of the tension in the book, for despite Alice being the main character, it’s actually Margery’s story that matches the Amy Lowell poem that gives the book its title. She’s one of those larger than life characters that do exist in the real world who inspire us to do better and dream bigger.

It’s always good to wander through the woods of Appalachia and Moyes brings the scenery to life as well as the people; all in all, a good read.


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