Reviewed by: The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes, and: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson Donna M. Crow (bio) Jojo Moyes. The Giver of Stars New York, N.Y.: Pamela Dorman Books, 2019. 400 pages. Hardcover. $28.00. Kim Michele Richardson. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks 2019. 320 pages. Hardcover. $25.99. Jojo Moyes. The Giver of Stars New York, N.Y.: Pamela Dorman Books, 2019. 400 pages. Hardcover. $28.00. Kim Michele Richardson. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks 2019. 320 pages. Hardcover. $25.99. The Pack Horse Library Project was a Works Progress Administration program that paid (mostly) women with no other means of support $28.00 per month to deliver books to remote areas in the Appalachian Mountains between 1935 [End Page 110] and 1943. Riding horseback (or mule) these women delivered more than books. They brought hope, human contact, education, and mental escape. Buried in history, relatively little has been written about them. In 2017 Smithsonian Magazine highlighted the horse-riding librarians as the Depression Era's first mobile library. In 2018, NPR's Morning Edition produced an episode entitled "The Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky." And in 2019, two new Kentucky-based novels were published: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson, released in May; and The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes, published in October. Finally, the literary world seems to be catching up. Richardson's The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is told first-person through the eyes and voice of nineteen-year-old Cussy Mary Carter. Nicknamed "Bluet" for her cerulean skin, she is one of the rare "blue people of Kentucky" carrying a genetic trait for methemoglobinemia. Townsfolk, even Cussy's fellow librarians, see her as the "other", sanctioning a thread of racism that drives the storyline. Pushed deep into the mountains to avoid prejudice, Cussy uses isolation to learn self-sufficiency. Her vernacular is thick and betrays her intelligence, allowing her cleverness to be overlooked in favor of condescension and judgment. Cussy's burdens are loaded from the beginning, with a concerned father whose misaligned attitudes on gender force her into an arranged marriage to an insensitive opportunist many years her senior. She is used, traumatized, and [End Page 111] impregnated by her husband and then accosted by his cousin, a self-proclaimed preacher, who justifies his own evil behavior via the misguided religious notion that her skin color makes her a sinner. Cussy's inner spark and desire for independence, her care and attention to her patrons on the library route, the unlikely friendships she forges, keep us rooting for her as she drudges forward and overcomes obstacles. Written in close third-person, Moyes's The Giver of Stars weaves in a braided narrative the voices of several women who become a team of librarians, relying on one another for support. Two main characters, Margery and Alice, an unlikely pair, drive the plot as they forge a bond against all odds. Margery is a self-made hardscrabble native whose deceased father was a bootlegger and outlaw which is enough to brand her a scorned woman. With that distinction, she seems freer than most to do what she likes, albeit discreetly. Alice, a demure English woman, is new to America, having married the son of a rich coal baron. Her expectations of luxury and freedom are dashed after he moves her to a small rural community near the mines where she finds just as many, if not more, limitations. Through the individual and collective relationships of the team of librarians, readers experience a force of woman power and the truth that it really does take a village. Unfortunately, once Moyes's novel was set to be released, rumors began to flow that portions of her story may have been "borrowed" from Richardson's work. This suspicion, reported by Buzzfeed, was alleged by an advanced reader/blogger who'd [End Page 112] previewed Moyes's book in April, then alerted Richardson—before either book was released. Richardson, a talented but lesser-known author, was understandably alarmed when Variety announced the bestselling British author's The...