The Giver of Stars

The Giver of Stars (2019) by JoJo Moyes is a work of women’s fiction that can also be categorized as historical fiction. Not long after its publication, The Giver of Stars became embroiled in controversy when another author, Kim Michele Richardson, noted similarities between her book about the WPA Pack Horse Librarians, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, and Moyes’s novel. Moyes is the bestselling author of Me Before You, and The Giver of Stars is a Reese’s Book Club pick.

Set in Depression-era America, the novel chronicles the lives of female librarians in Baileyville, a town in Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains. The real-life WPA Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky program, part of the New Deal and a project spotlighted by Eleanor Roosevelt as beneficial to women and children, lasted from 1935-1943, delivering books via horseback to rural inhabitants of Kentucky. The women face the adversity of a town hellbent on determining what women can and can’t do, both in their public and private lives. Themes of friendship, the effects of misogyny, corporate greed, inequality, and rebirth fill the pages of this novel.

This study guide refers to the Penguin Random House hardcover first edition.