Wonderland Creek by Lynn Austin

Wonderland Creek by Lynn Austin

I have to admit when I first started reading this novel, I almost lost interest.  The first few pages seemed like young adult and as I've stated in previous book reviews, I am not into young adult fiction but I kept at it and within the first chapter, I was hooked.

Alice Grace Ripley is a dreamy librarian who always has her nose in a book and is always wishing for a happily ever after story of her own. She finds it when she loses her librarian job in Illinois due to the Great Depression and goes to Kentucky to deliver donated books to a library in a poor mining town. Her life becomes the story when she stumbles onto the scene of murder, betrayal, family feud, and true love.

The characters are endearing and you feel yourself becoming involved with them early on in the story.   Mack, the librarian and his 100 year old roommate and former slave, Lillie, four packhorse librarians, Ike the fiddle player, Belle (Lillie's horse),  as well as various troubled and colorful townspeople of Acorn Kentucky.  Also, I'd like to note that there are similarities to Alice in Wonderland in the story.

This is one of those books that you wish would never end.  There are laugh out loud moments, tearful moments, and sitting on the edge of your seat moments in this book that I won't forget for a long time.   I can't wait to read more by Lynn Austin.  I give this book 5 stars!

Published in 2011 by Bethany House Publishers.

*Note:  President Franklin Roosevelt founded the relief program, the New Deal in 1933 to help alleviate the effects of the Great Depression.  One of the most innovative programs of Roosevelt's Work Projects Administration was the Packhorse Library Project.  The program employed mostly women to deliver books on horseback to neighbors and school houses in rural and remote areas of Kentucky.  The packhorse librarians provided not only entertainment in the form of books and magazines, but they also offered practical help on home health care, cooking, agriculture, parenting, canning hygiene, and machinery.  They also opened the world to these isolated people allowing them to learn not only about their own government and country, but of lands and people across the globe.