The Giver of Stars served with Pinto Beans and Cornbread

 The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes served with Pinto Beans and Cornbread.   

This was for my book group discussion planned for April.  It is set in Kentucky and focuses on the Packhorse librarians.  This was a program started by Eleanor Roosevelt during the depression to help get books into the hands of the less fortunate.    The main character is Alice who is English and marries a Kentucky man who is vacationing in Europe.  She is hoping to escape her confined English life but gets more than she bargained for.  Once in Kentucky, she isn't finding married life with Bennet to be what she expected.  She signs up to be a packhorse librarian and there we meet Margery who is a tough broad who runs the librarians.   Together with a group of other women, they ride the back trails of Kentucky delivering books.  There is a love story, a murder mystery and plenty of family drama.  

Here is what I liked, the whole Kentucky packhorse Librarian thing is super interesting.  Love any story about books and the power of reading.  I felt like the author did a nice job of setting the surroundings.  I liked the story of the women's friendship and overall really liked the women. 

It was a bit slow for me in the first half.   I just felt like it dragged a tiny bit.  And it all felt a bit predictable with the lame husband and mean father in law.    

Glad I read it and would recommend it.  ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2  

Last year I read the Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek and enjoyed it.  There was such a controversy on line around the fact that the books came out in a close time period and were focused on the same topic.   I think they were both different enough that it is all good.  I mean we have 100's of WW2 books and no one loses their mind that they came out around the same time.   No controversy for me.  Both were good and glad i read both though I am kind of glad I separated them by a year! 

I knew pretty quickly that I had to make Pinto Beans and Cornbread for this story.  They mention cornbread multiple times in the book.  My folks grew up in the deep mountains of West Virginia and pinto beans and cornbread were a staple on their tables.   My mom fixed it every couple of weeks when i was a kid.  Probably wasn't my favorite meal back then but now I think back on that with such comfort!

For years i didn't eat it but about 10 years back I made my own version minus the giant slab of fat in the beans.  I added onions and garlic and a little tiny bit of red peppers just to give it a kick. Mom's cornbread was NOT sweet cornbread.   When I moved to the west coast, I found that most of the cornbread was on the sweeter side.   

I made a giant pot for this book and ate it all!    Delicious!