The Giver of Stars is engaging historical fiction written by bestselling author Jojo Moyes. The novel tells the story of Alice – an English bride – and her “traveling library” colleagues as they deliver books to isolated families in depression-era Kentucky.

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Let’s begin with a The Giver of Stars summary.

Lonely Alice Wright is living in England with her emotionally distant family. She feels trapped and pessimistic about her future, and then handsome American Bennett Van Cleve comes along. The two have a whirlwind romance and get married. Alice is enamored with Bennett, and she looks forward to escaping to America.

But life in the United States isn’t what she expects. Instead of living in an exciting city she is brought to a small town in Kentucky, and is dismayed to learn that she and Bennett will be living with his intrusive, ever-present father. The honeymoon is soon over as Alice and Bennett become increasingly distant with each other. She feels like she traded one trap for another.

Things begin to look up when Alice attends a church service and finds out that the new Pack Horse Library Project needs to hire women librarians to serve families in Appalachia by bringing them books. The program, championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, required the “book women” to travel as much as 20 miles on horseback with saddle bags full of heavy books and magazines. To the deep dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice publicly announces her intention to become a librarian.

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Joining the group of book women finally gives Alice the acceptance and friendships she’s been craving. Her fellow librarians are very different from each other, but they all thrive while working for the project. Alice gains strength and independence, and falls in love with the Appalachian landscape. Bennett’s lovely English bride becomes weathered and smells like horse. She’s fine with the transformation, but he is not. The distance between them widens.

As a group, the librarians face distrust, hostility, and even an unplanned pregnancy and murder trial. But they also experience deep gratitude from the families they serve and experience satisfaction from bringing the outside world to these families and turning their children into readers.

Although a little heavy on unoriginal stereotypes, I enjoyed The Giver of Stars. The librarians were an interesting crew that include a fiercely independent mountain woman, a girl crippled by polio, and a trained librarian who has to sneak in the back door of the library because she is black.

In addition to a reminder of the terrible way black Americans were treated at the time, The Giver of Stars also illustrates how far women’s rights have come since then. I can’t imagine conforming to the restrictive expectations that were forced upon women. No thank you. The real “book women” were groundbreakers.

Which leads us to what was probably one of my favorite things about The Giver of Stars – learning about the Pack Horse Library Project. I hadn’t heard of this program before and love historical fiction that teaches me new things. If you would like to learn more about the project, read “Horse-Riding Librarians Were the Great Depression’s Bookmobiles” in Smithsonian Magazine.

To round out this review of the audio version of The Giver of Stars, I have to say that the narration by Julia Whelan, who also narrated The Women, is terrific. She handles Alice’s British accent very well (for some reason that’s a skill I admire) and must have had a lot of fun doing the Kentucky/southern accents of the other characters.

I think anyone who enjoys historical fiction with strong themes of persistence and womanly strength will enjoy The Giver of Stars.

This novel appeared on a book list I developed: 29 Highly Rated Historical Fiction Books to Read Next. Perhaps you’ll also find your next read on the list.