Women-centered and rooted in rural 1930’s Kentucky, The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes is a captivating story about the cost of liberation and personal fulfillment.

In the midst of the Great Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt insists that the Pack Horse Library program be added the WPA (Works Progress Administration) jobs initiative. It’s a daring plan, sending women on horseback to deliver books to the most remote mountainous regions of eastern Appalachia.

When she arrives from England with her new husband, Alice knows nothing about the little town of Baileyville, Kentucky or about the newly-formed Packhorse Library. She was attracted to Bennet Van Cleve for his blond American good looks and his athletic build but knows little about him. She has no idea that he and his father run a dirty, dangerous coal mine that is, unfortunately, the life-blood of the community. 

Rambling around her father-in-law’s mansion all day and receiving little or no affection from her husband at night, Alice soon becomes bored. At a town meeting when the woman heading up the Packhorse Library project asks for volunteers she stands up, waving off the protests of the Van Cleve men.

But this story is about far more than a bored housewife seeking adventure. Meeting Marjorie O’Hare, the half-Cherokee leader of the riding librarians, changes Alice’s life. While Alice had chafed at the role of the proper young woman she was brought up to be in England, Marjorie gave a flat out ‘no’ to anyone’s expectations of her as a girl or a grown woman. 

She’d been exploring the mountain trails that surrounded Baileyville since she’d been old enough to ride a horse. She’s banned her lover from ever mentioning marriage, despite the physical and emotional bond they’ve shared for ten years. It takes a month of quiet mountain travel for Margery to teach Alice her routes, but Alice sees right away that her trail boss has even more to teach her about being a free woman.

In the saddle 10 hours a day, captivated by the beauty of the rugged country while sweating and swatting the no-see-ums and flies in the summer and wearing six layers of wool and flannel to ward off the bitter cold of winter, Alice delights in her newfound independence. She’s truly happy for the first time in her life. Part of that comes from her confidence-building sense of purpose and her solitary enjoyment of nature, and part of it comes from the fast-growing bond she forms with her fellow packhorse librarians.

A childhood victim of polio, Izzy’s leg brace has put severe limits on her opportunities as a young woman. Her parents, with substantial means, have sheltered her. With Marjorie’s encouragement, she defies them by casting off the brace and learning to ride. In the evenings, when the other weary riders return to the library, she surprises them by singing ballads and folk tunes with a delightfully strong, clear voice.

Beth hides her affection for the library team behind the bravado she learned as a moonshiner’s daughter. She smokes. She cusses. She spits. And on more than one occasion she gets the group drunk enough to spill their secrets. But, when a flood threatens the community, and again when Marjorie runs afoul of the law, Beth proves to be fiercely loyal and unstintingly brave.

Sophia is the only professional librarian among them. She ran a colored library in Louisville, but was compelled to return to Baileyville when her brother lost his leg in a mining accident. She pulls the books that need to be packed into the riders’ saddlebags at dawn and reshelves the ones the riders drop at her feet at the end of the day, repairing them with self-taught bookbinder skills. She arrives at sunset and leaves at dawn, knowing that the town isn’t ready to see a black librarian.

The Giver of Stars is about women liberating themselves from society’s expectations, about women sticking together through the trials of physical hardship and emotional turmoil and about women who defy the odds against them in their pursuit of happiness. It’s also a story brimming with compassion.

Imagine poor, barely literate children who go for months without seeing anyone but their own kin, bounding from their cabins, as thrilled as kids-at-Christmas to see the library lady coming up the trail with books.

Imagine the solace an illiterate coal miner dying of black lung disease finds when a library lady sits by his side reading to him, transporting him to another world, letting him forget his pain for a while.

Imagine Alice from England, afraid at first of the scowls of the gun-toting country folks she first meets, transformed into a competent mountain horsewoman who looks forward to the smiles, thanks and small gifts that these same hillbilly-branded families bestow on her with each visit.   

Jojo Moyes’s fictional tale is based on the very real packhorse librarians that operated in eastern Kentucky from 1935 to 1943. As a lifelong feminist, I’m so glad she opened my eyes to a part of history I had overlooked. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/horse-riding-librarians-were-great-depression-bookmobiles-180963786/