THE GIVER OF STARS by Jojo Moyes

It’s the 1930s, and Alice’s marriage is a sham.  She and her husband Bennett live in the same house as Bennett’s father, who owns a coal mine in rural Kentucky.  The community has begun a library service that delivers books to families who live in the wooded hills nearby.  Alice seizes the opportunity to escape her unfulfilled life by volunteering as one of the packhorse librarians.  She is an accomplished horsewoman from England, and soon finds that this job basically gives her a whole new family.  The other three librarians have their own reasons for joining the group, but the most independent of these is Margery, their defacto leader.  After having cried my way through Me Before You, I was not enthusiastic about reading another JoJo Moyes novel, but I found myself racing through this book and, yes, stopping at intervals to wipe the tears from my eyes, particularly as I neared the end.  It’s formulaic and melodramatic, and the writing is so-so, but I can’t deny that Moyes has a knack for eliciting emotion from the reader, in a manipulative sort of way.  Alice is the main character, but Margery as her mentor is the book’s heart and soul and is as ornery as her mule, Charley.  The book has conflict galore but mainly in the person of Alice’s father-in-law.  He is rotten to the core with his disregard for the safety of the miners and their families, and he’s as mean as a snake when it comes to his expectations of women in general and the packhorse librarians in particular, especially Alice and Margery.  He is about as one-dimensional a character as they come, and Bennett cowers in his father’s shadow.  There are a few good men as well, and they are just as one-dimensional in the opposite direction.  This may not be great literature, but I unabashedly enjoyed my hours with these strong women who are even stronger together.