WONDERLAND CREEK PB

I was perfectly content with my life--that is, until the pages of my story were ripped out before I had a chance to live happily ever after.

Alice Grace Ripley lives in a dream world, her nose stuck in a book. But the happily-ever-after life she's planned on suddenly falls apart when her boyfriend breaks up with her, accusing her of living in a world of fiction instead of the real one. To top it off, Alice loses her beloved library job because of cutbacks due to the Great Depression.

Longing to run from small-town gossip, Alice flees to the mountains of eastern Kentucky to deliver five boxes of donated books to the tiny coal-mining town of Acorn, a place with no running water, no electricity, and where the librarians ride ornery horses up steep mountain passes to deliver books. When Alice is forced to stay in Acorn far longer than she planned, she discovers that real-life adventure, mystery--and especially romance--may be far better than her humble dreams could have imagined.

Reviews
'Alice is a much-indulged 22-year-old librarian and minister's daughter, always more absorbed in books than in the world around her. Suddenly losing both beau and job, she opts to personally deliver the books she's collected for a small town in Kentucky. The place isn't at all what she expected, and soon Alice is living large and learning a great deal about herself and her faith. Set in 1936, six-time Christy Award winner Austin's charmingly candid, wryly self-deprecating, first-person inspirational novel showcases her ability to make history--especially the New Deal workforce projects, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the WPA--more than drily factual. Austin succeeds in combining suspense, romance, and an insider's perspective on one isolated, close-knit Appalachian community and the packhorse librarians who served it so faithfully. Readers who enjoyed her WWII novel, While We're Far Apart (2010), will find this one much lighter in tone, though in its coming-of-age narrative, Austin explores many of the same themes, including family, the challenge of living a godly life in an ungodly world, and service to others'
--Booklist

Pages: 400