![]() ![]() Agent: Sheila Crowley, Curtis Brown (U.K.). There’s plenty of drama, but the reader’s lasting impression is one of love. Moyes ( Still Me) stereotypes her antagonists a bit, but provides tremendous warmth among the librarians and centers their perspectives thoroughly. ![]() Expectation versus reality hits hard, and soon Alice also suffers from her husband. When she arrives in Kentucky, she soon realizes that she’s expected to be a silent woman who cooks, cleans, and births babies. But powerful men in Baileyville oppose the library, as it employs a black woman, influences women and children’s minds with fiction, encourages previously illiterate families to defend their rights against encroaching mining companies, and teaches women about intimacy through a secret copy of Married Love. Alice begins as a purportedly rebellious, somewhat naïve newlywed from England who dreams of glitz and glamour in the United States. She’s sustained by her friendships with the other women, especially the brash, self-sufficient Margery O’Hare, and the appreciation of the isolated families she serves. She finds respite in riding with the women of the new WPA-sponsored horseback library. Alice Wright escapes her stifling English family by marrying an American, but this choice leads to further misery in the rural Kentucky household of her unaffectionate husband and his domineering father, the owner of the local coal mine. An adventure story grounded in female competence and mutual support, and an obvious affection for the popular literature of the early 20th century, give this Depression-era novel plenty of appeal. ![]()
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