Haunted by her sister's mysterious disappearance, Lucy Wilson arrives in Rowan County, Kentucky, in the spring of 1911 to work for Cora Wilson Stewart, superintendent of education. When Cora sends Lucy into the hills to act as scribe for the mountain people, she is repelled by the primitive conditions and intellectual poverty she encounters. Few adults can read and write. Born in those hills, Cora knows the plague of illiteracy. So does Brother Wyatt, a singing schoolmaster who travels through the hills. Involving Lucy and Wyatt, Cora hatches a plan to open the schoolhouses to adults on moonlit nights. The best way to combat poverty, she believes, is to eliminate illiteracy. But will the people come?
★★★1/2
*A novel inspired by true events
Lucy Wilson comes to Rowan County, Kentucky, in 1911 to help her cousin Cora, who had recently been elected the very first female school superintendent of Rowan County. There's a smidge of bad blood between Cora and the town librarian Mrs. Klopp, because Cora, a three-time divorcee (as Klopp likes to bring up) beat Klopp's husband, the town judge, in the election.
Taking letter dictation for the local illiterate population, Lucy is immediately taken aback by the level of poverty she's witnessing: not only illiteracy, but food and clean water shortages, lice and ringworm outbreaks, even a lack of decent footwear among several of the families. Yet these new neighbors of hers show incredible resilience. Coming from something of a privileged background herself, Lucy is baffled to find that these folks even look happy most days. She comes to find that though many are painfully aware of illiteracy and desperately crave to know the beauty within books, what they might lack they make up for within a rich heritage of song, dance, and a deep sense of community.
That community the Appalachian people of Rowan County have come to know and love is now being threatened by local lumber companies stripping the lands clean. The biggest offender? The lumber company owned by none other than Lucy's own father. Lucy discovers that these forest lands were signed over to the timber companies through shady means --- they counted on the fact that the people of the area would have little to no reading ability, so the companies slipped in extra stuff not discussed with the people being paid for their land. When Lucy confronts her father with this, he (like many other business men around him) answer with the canned "Well, they signed it." What makes matters worse is the fact that Lucy's father himself came from Rowan County, growing up in similar conditions to the people he's now either knowing or unknowingly cheating. In his defense, he does try to make amends later on... so at least there's that.
Because of all this mess with the contracts (among other things), Cora is inspired to start up a system of what she calls "moonlight schools" across the county --- night classes illiterate adults can attend to strengthen their literacy and arithmetic skills. Previously held back by the belief of the day that adults couldn't be taught such skills (their minds being too closed to take in new information the way a child would), Cora is proven wrong with the story of elderly Miss Mollie. Miss Mollie, a great-grandmother, got tired of always having to dictate letters to her daughter, so one day she sits herself down with a children's book and studies it for days until she understands it backwards and forwards, eventually grasping enough language skills to write her daughter a little two line letter... but one she wrote herself, not dictated!
"The real pity boils down to illiteracy. It renders the mountain people victims."
"How so?
Cora put her pen down and leaned back in her chair, "It takes an effort of the imagination to put oneself in the place of the illiterate. To picture what life is like for one who must get all his information by ear. If a man cannot read or write or vote, he cannot speak. He is mute. He is forgotten. You might think it's a pity they cannot read, but the real tragedy is they cannot speak...Our illiterates have been the victims of educated scoundrels, who have taken advantage of their ignorance. The only way to lift people is to teach them to lift themselves. Literacy is the only road to true freedom...Literacy is the means to many good ends. And these ends are not just the immediate practical ones, but literacy gives a voice to the silent....Only a literate people can have a truly democratic government...Indifference is our only obstacle, and Rowan County is not indifferent. Not at all. We take care of each other."
When it came to the characters, I wanted to root for Lucy, but if I'm being honest... I found her to be kind of a boring character most of the time. She also had some not so likeable qualities --- comes off as a bit of a busybody when she tattles to Cora about teenage Angie Spencer reading dime store novels instead of something more "enriching". Or the snobbery underneath the comment that Brother Wyatt "could be good-looking" if he just had better clothes or more money. Luckily she eventually outgrows this silly line of thinking to see that PLENTY of things can make a person good-looking to someone, same way plenty can make them unattractive, no matter how much money they have, as she learns through her flirtations with slick-talking lumber company sales agent Andrew Spencer. But I do feel for her, the way she's had to carry the guilt of her sister's disappearance all these years of her life.
Sidenote on the Andrew Spencer character: he was definitely one I was giving side-eye to every time he came into a scene, but I did like his "jailhouse singer" joke about his own singing voice in church -- "always behind bars and missing a key". As a former choir kid, this gave me a good chuckle!
I also had mixed feelings about Cora. She's doing good work, and I love her drive and commitment to better her little corner of the world... but the way she goes about it sometimes... I wasn't always a fan. She often acts like she's giving Lucy these helpful, character-building opportunities... and I guess in a way she is... but the way she presents it read manipulative to me more than anything. Then there's the conversation she has with local teachers about the moonlight schools. I get that she was trying to make miracles happen on literally a zero dollars budget, but again, Cora has a bad habit of not ASKING people for help, just expecting. Common courtesy, woman, geez! She honestly thought these teachers would be 100% cool with working night shifts on top of their regular day classes, getting zero compensation for their time and efforts?! These people have families! If they were to volunteer themselves, then yes, that's entirely different. But that's why you ASK, not EXPECT them to fall in line with your goals and wishes. This scene got under my skin, but in her historical afterward Fisher mentions that the real moonlight schools were, in fact, a completely grassroots movement that was entirely volunteer staffed from the very beginning, so that made me feel better. I'll put my rant away LOL.
* Also mentioned in that afterword: After the establishment of moonlight schools in Rowan County, the illiteracy rate in the state of Kentucky dropped by four percent. During the same period, the national illiteracy rate only dropped by 1.7 percent. The real Cora also went on to establish additional moonlight schools for Native American and African American students.
If the title stirs your curiosity, be aware that you have to be patient with this one. The topic of the moonlight schools doesn't even come up until about 160+ pages in... everything prior to that point just sort of builds up why the idea would be beneficial to the area. BUT, I will say that this story would be an amazingly inspiring piece to read aloud to present day adults (or even children) struggling within minimal levels of literacy. Encourage them to keep on with their efforts! As it's pointed out here, there is power in being well-read and well-spoken. There are those in the world, even today, who would happily take advantage of anyone with minimal education --- whether it be a politician, a loan officer, a slick salesman ready to dump a bunch of future debt on you because you didn't understand the fine print --- they're out there. So if you know someone who is planting their flag on Planet "Reading is Stupid", this story is a good place to start in hopefully turning that thought around.
NOTE: The beginning of this novel has spoilers for Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.
FTC DISCLAIMER: Revell Publishing kindly provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions above are entirely my own.
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