The Giver of Stars: Reese's Book Club (a Novel) - Softcover

Moyes, Jojo

 
9780399562495: The Giver of Stars: Reese's Book Club (a Novel)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0399562494 ISBN 13: 9780399562495
Verlag: Penguin Books, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER |  A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
 
“A great narrative about personal strength and really captures how books bring communities together.” —Reese Witherspoon
 
From the author of the forthcoming Someone Else’s Shoes, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond in Depression-era America

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve, hoping to escape her stifling life in England.  But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.

The leader, and soon Alice's greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who's never asked a man's permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky. 

What happens to them--and to the men they love--becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion. These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives.

Based on a true story rooted in America’s past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic--a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jojo Moyes is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars, Still Me, Paris for One and Other Stories, After You, One Plus One, The Girl You Left Behind, Me Before You, The Last Letter from Your Lover, The Horse Dancer, Silver Bay, The Ship of Brides, and The Peacock Emporium. The Last Letter from Your Lover is now available as a major motion picture on Netflix. She lives with her husband and three children in Essex, England.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

Three months earlier

It was, everyone agreed, fanning themselves outside the store or passing in the shade of the eucalyptus trees, unseasonably warm for September. The meeting hall at Baileyville was thick with the smells of lye soap and stale perfume, bodies wedged together in good poplin dresses and summer suits. The heat had permeated even the clapboard walls so that the wood creaked and sighed in protest. Pressed tight behind Bennett as he shuffled his way along the row of packed seats, apologizing as each person rose from their chair with a barely suppressed sigh, Alice swore that she felt the warmth of each body leach into her own as it leaned backward to let them pass.

So sorry. So sorry.

Bennett finally reached two empty seats and Alice, her cheeks glowing with embarrassment, sat down, ignoring the sideways glances of the people around them. Bennett looked down at his lapel, brushing at non-existent lint, then spotted her skirt. "You didn't change?" he murmured.

"You said we were late."

"I didn't mean for you to come out with your house clothes on."

She had been trying to make cottage pie, to encourage Annie to put something other than Southern food on the table. But the potatoes had gone green, she hadn't been able to gauge the heat of the range, and the grease had spattered all over her when she dropped the meat onto the griddle. And when Bennett came in looking for her (she had, of course, lost track of time) he could not for the life of him see why she wouldn't just leave culinary matters to the housekeeper when an important meeting was about to take place.

Alice placed her hand over the largest grease mark on her skirt and resolved to keep it there for the next hour. Because it would be an hour. Or two. Or-Lord help her-three.

Church and meetings. Meetings and church. Sometimes Alice Van Cleve felt as if she had merely swapped one tedious daily pastime for another. That very morning in church Pastor McIntosh had spent almost two hours declaiming the sinners who were apparently plotting ungodly dominance around the little town, and was now fanning himself and looking disturbingly ready to speak again.

"Put your shoes back on," Bennett murmured. "Someone might see you."

"It's this heat," she said. "They're English feet. They're not used to these temperatures." She felt, rather than saw, her husband's weary disapproval. But she was too hot and tired to care, and the speaker's voice had a narcoleptic quality so that she caught only every third word or so-germinating . . . pods . . . chaff . . . paper bags-and found it hard to care much about the rest.

Married life, she had been told, would be an adventure. Travel to a new land! She had married an American, after all. New food! A new culture! New experiences! She had pictured herself in New York, neat in a two-piece suit in bustling restaurants and on crowded sidewalks. She would write home, boasting of her new experiences. Oh, Alice Wright? Wasn't she the one who married the gorgeous American? Yes, I had a postcard from her-she was at the Metropolitan Opera, or Carnegie Hall . . .

Nobody had warned that it would involve so much small-talk over good china with elderly aunts, so much pointless mending and quilting or, even worse, so many deathly dull sermons. Endless, decades-long sermons and meetings. Oh, but these men did love the sound of their own voices! She felt as if she were being scolded for hours, four times a week.

The Van Cleves had stopped at no fewer than thirteen churches on their way back here, and the only sermon that Alice enjoyed had taken place in Charleston, where the preacher had gone on so long his congregation had lost patience and decided, as one, to "sing him down"-to drown him out with song until he got the message and rather crossly closed his religious shop for the day. His vain attempts to speak over them, as their voices rose and swelled determinedly, had made her giggle.

The congregations of Baileyville, Kentucky, she had observed, seemed disappointingly rapt.

"Just put them back on, Alice. Please."

She caught the eye of Mrs. Schmidt, in whose parlor she had taken tea two weeks previously, and looked to the front again, trying not to appear too friendly in case she invited her a second time.

"Well, thank you, Hank, for that advice on seed storage. I'm sure you've given us a lot to think about."

As Alice slid her feet into her shoes, the pastor added, "Oh, no, don't get up, ladies and gentlemen. Mrs. Brady has asked for a moment of your time."

Alice, now wise to this phrase, slid off her shoes again. A short middle-aged woman moved to the front-the kind her father would have described as "well upholstered," with the firm padding and solid curves one associated with a quality sofa.

"It's about the mobile library," she said, wafting her neck with a white fan and adjusting her hat. "There have been developments that I would like to bring to your attention.

"We are all aware of the-uh-devastating effects the Depression has had on this great country. So much attention has been focused on survival that many other elements of our lives have had to take a backseat. Some of you may be aware of President and Mrs. Roosevelt's formidable efforts to restore attention to literacy and learning. Well, earlier this week I was privileged to attend a tea with Mrs. Lena Nofcier, chairman of the Library Service for the Kentucky PTA, and she told us that, as part of it, the Works Progress Administration has instituted a system of mobile libraries in several states-and even a couple here in Kentucky. Some of you may have heard about the library they set up over in Harlan County. Yes? Well, it has proven immensely successful. Under the auspices of Mrs. Roosevelt herself and the WPA-"

"She's an Episcopalian."

"What?"

"Roosevelt. She's an Episcopalian."

Mrs. Brady's cheek twitched. "Well, we won't hold that against her. She's our First Lady and she is minding to do great things for our country."

"She should be minding to know her place, not stirring things up everywhere." A jowly man in a pale linen suit shook his head and gazed around him, seeking agreement.

Across the way, Peggy Foreman leaned forward to adjust her skirt at precisely the moment Alice noticed her, which made it seem that Alice had been staring at her. Peggy scowled and lifted her tiny nose into the air, then muttered something to the girl beside her, who leaned forward to give Alice the same unfriendly look. Alice sat back in her seat, trying to quell the color rising in her cheeks.

Alice, you're not going to settle in unless you make some friends, Bennett kept telling her, as if she could sway Peggy Foreman and her crew of sour faces.

"Your sweetheart is casting spells in my direction again," Alice murmured.

"She's not my sweetheart."

"Well, she thought she was."

"I told you. We were just kids. I met you, and . . . well, that's all history."

"I wish you'd tell her that."

He leaned toward her. "Alice, the way you keep hanging back, people are starting to think you're kind of-stand-offish . . ."

"I'm English, Bennett. We're not built to be . . . hospitable."

"I just think the more you get involved, the better it is for both of us. Pop thinks so, too."

"Oh. He does, does he?"

"Don't be like that."

Mrs. Brady shot them a look. "As I was saying, due to the success of such endeavors in neighboring states, the WPA has released funds to enable us to create our own traveling library here in Lee County."

Alice stifled a yawn.

On the credenza at home there was a photograph of Bennett in his baseball uniform. He had just hit a home run, and his face held a look of peculiar intensity and joy, as if at that moment he were experiencing...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Penguin Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0399562494
ISBN 13 
9780399562495
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
390
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9
Plovdiv
Bulgarien

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9780399562488: The Giver of Stars

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  0399562486 ISBN 13:  9780399562488
Verlag: Pamela Dorman Books, 2019
Hardcover