The Giver of Stars(129)

Beth’s life remained largely unchanged immediately following the trial. She remained at home with her father and brothers, complained bitterly about them at every turn, smoked in private, drank in public, then surprised everybody six months later by announcing that she had saved every penny she had ever earned and was about to leave on an ocean liner to see the continent of India. They laughed at this at first – Beth was possessed, after all, of the strangest sense of humour – but she pulled the ticket from her saddlebag to show them. ‘How on earth did you raise all that money?’ said Izzy, confused. ‘You told me your daddy took half of it towards running the house.’

Beth grew uncharacteristically tongue-tied and stammered out some response to do with extra work and savings that were her own and not knowing why everyone in this darn town needed to know each other’s business anyway. And when, a month after she had departed, the sheriff uncovered an abandoned still over by Johnsons’ fallen-down cow barn, the ground around it littered with cigarette butts, it was decreed that the two things could not possibly be related. Or, at least, that was how they put it to her father.

Her first letter came from a place called Surat and had the fanciest postmark you ever saw and contained a picture of her wearing a brightly coloured embroidered robe called a sari and holding a peacock under her arm. Kathleen exclaimed that it wouldn’t shock her a whit if Beth ended up marrying the King of India because that girl was plumb full of surprises. To which Margery responded drily that that would certainly surprise them all.

Izzy cut a record, with her father’s permission. Within two years she had become one of Kentucky’s most popular singers, known for the purity of her voice and her penchant for performing in floor-length flowing dresses. She recorded a song about a murder in the hills that was popular across three states and performed an on-stage duet with Tex Lafayette at a music hall in Knoxville that left her quite overcome for the best part of a week afterwards, not least because he held her hand during the high notes. Mrs Brady said that when it reached number four in the gramophone charts, it was the proudest moment in her life. Second only, she admitted privately, to the letter she had received from Mrs Lena C. Nofcier some two months after the close of the trial, thanking her for her extraordinary efforts in keeping the WPA Packhorse Library, Baileyville, running in a time of crisis.

We women face many unexpected challenges when we choose to step outside what are considered our habitual boundaries. And you, dear Mrs Brady, have proven yourself more than a match to any such challenge that has arisen. I look forward to discussing this and many other pertinent issues in person with you one day.



Mrs Nofcier had not yet made it as far as Baileyville but Mrs Brady was pretty sure it was going to happen.

The library opened five days a week, its management split between Alice and Margery, and during that time the women continued to lend every possible kind of novel, manual, recipe book and magazine. Memories of the trial faded quickly, especially among those who realized they might like to continue to borrow books after all, and life in Baileyville returned to its normal rhythms. Only the Van Cleve men seemed at pains to avoid the library, driving their cars at speed up and down Split Creek, and mostly taking a route some way around town to avoid that building altogether.

So when, several months into 1939, Peggy Van Cleve stopped by, it came as something of a surprise. Margery watched her spend some moments loitering outside as if searching for something vitally important in her purse, then peering through the window to check if Margery was on her own. She wasn’t known to be the most voracious of readers, after all.

Margery O’Hare was a busy woman, what with Virginia, the dog and her husband, and all the many distractions her home seemed to hold, these days. But that evening she would break off what she was doing and smile to herself, wondering whether to tell Alice Guisler how the new Mrs Van Cleve had stepped inside, lowered her voice, and after some prevarication and a lot of theatrical scanning of random titles on the shelves, asked whether there was truth in the rumour that there was a book here that advised ladies regarding certain sensitive matters relating to the bedroom. Or how Margery had kept a straight face and said, why, yes, of course. It was just the facts, after all.

She would still be thinking about it – and still trying not to smile – when they all arrived back at the library the following day.





Postscript





The WPA’s Horseback Librarian programme ran from 1935 to 1943. At its height it brought books to more than a hundred thousand rural inhabitants. No programme like it has ever been set up since.

Eastern Kentucky remains one of the poorest – and most beautiful – places in the United States.





Acknowledgements


This book, more than anything I’ve ever written, was a labour of love. I fell in love with a place, and its people, and then the story as it came, and that made writing an unusual joy. To that end I want to thank Barbara Napier and everyone at Snug Hollow in Irvine, Kentucky, especially Olivia Knuckles, without whose voices I wouldn’t have found those of my heroines. Your spirit and that of the holler runs through this book and I am so happy to call you friends.

Thank you to everyone at Whisper Valley Trails in the Cumberland Mountains, who enabled me to ride the kind of routes that the women would have done, and to everyone I stopped and quizzed and harangued and chatted to during my travels.