Is there such a thing as a cozy historical fiction novel, the way there are cozy mysteries? I think that’s what this is. The tone is light. The problems are serious, but the reader knows that all will be well…the plot just takes us along as to how we get to that happy ending we are confident is coming. That’s not a knock on The Giver of Stars–I enjoyed reading it. It would make an excellent feel-good movie, and it probably will at some point.

The story takes place in Depression-era rural Kentucky, The villains are almost cartoonishly villainous–an overbearing patriarch and company boss, and a rapacious drunk, both prone to violence against women. Our heroine, Alice Wright Van Cleve, is an Englishwoman who married a handsome American in a misguided attempt to escape her unhappy homelife, only to find herself trapped in an even worse domestic situation in an unfriendly small town. Her next escape plan worked out just a bit better, as she volunteered for the Pack Horse Library Project (this was a Works Progress Administration program, something like an early version of a bookmobile, with women delivering library books on horseback to remote regions), and found that the librarians were brave, kind, hardworking, and true friends. The characters are for the most part rather unrealistically divided into evildoers and saints, but it feels churlish to complain about that–mostly this reader was interested in celebrating the librarians and their triumphs, and the importance of books and community, and seeing the bad actors thoroughly defeated.

I wouldn’t call it a beach read, more of a winter comfort read–curl up with this one and some hot chocolate on a snowy evening and see the librarians through their trials and tribulations to the inevitble happy endings all around.

NOVEL: The Giver of Stars

AUTHOR: Jojo Moyes

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2019

IMAGE: book cover, Penguin Books