The Librarian of Boone's Hollow

As always, I thoroughly enjoyed KVS's ability to tell a captivating story. The characters are strong and (mostly) good. The story arc with the antagonist was honestly the part that bugged me the most because it was hard to feel sympathy for her because despite her own pain she continually contemplated causing pain to others.

Addie is a strong lead and I loved how she woke up to her circumstances at college and instead of becoming a weeping, helpless mess, she got up and took hold and did something. I really enjoyed the parts about her making new friends along the way...this was probably my favorite part about the characters.

The part about the packhorse librarians was very interesting and is always a subject I'm interested in. I did think it was a little funny that the girls made a big deal about wearing overalls and riding astride like it was 1850 or something, since girls didn't much care about not showing ankles there and routinely rode astride–side saddles weren't a “thing” much of anywhere by the 1930s. Here's an interesting article about the program: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/horse-riding-librarians-were-great-depression-bookmobiles-180963786/

Emmett was a solid lead guy, quiet and steady. I didn't feel like I got to know him anywhere near as much as I did Addie, so in many ways he remained a mystery. Just as I began to get a really good picture of who he was, the story was over. I'd have liked more chapters with Emmett, especially since the issues with his father ended up playing a role in the events.

Nanny Fay, though, was both an enjoyable story about someone who's been an outcast finding sympathy, and a huge frustration. The very things that made her appear as an outcast were the things that would make a woman most valuable in old-time Appalachian culture. Mountain culture was innately suspicious of every outsider and of any organized medicine, being both fatalistic about disease (remnants of the strong Calvinism of the French and Scottish ancestry they celebrated) and deeply superstitious about anything resembling cause and effect. There is no reason that anyone would have thrown off the local herb woman just because someone died—not with the innate fatalism rampant in Appalachia. The Cherokee link doesn't hold water either, since they received shelter there during the Trail of Tears era. Of all the cultures of frontier America, the Appalachian one was probably the most compatible with native tribes, given how they also wished to live off the land and learned many herbal and gardening processes from them. There is also no evidence that anyone in the culture would have ostracized one of their own as a “witch lady” or anything of the sort for the reasons given.

Here is a paper about the importance of aging women healers in the community: https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1877&context=etd

So, overall, while I liked the themes of family, friendship, and forgiveness, the massive historical miss on Nanny Fay's character left me feeling disconnected from the story and the setting.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.