Night Came With Many Stars by Simon Van Booy

 

Carol was only thirteen when her father lost her in a poker game.  Her father was a mean alcoholic who had a gambling issue and her mother died early.  For the next year, Carol spent the week with him cleaning and cooking and then on the weekend, going to the house of the man who won her and doing the same except with nightly rapes thrown in.

When Carol realizes that she is pregnant, she knows she has to get away.  In 1933, there isn't much of a social safety net so she decides to run away and hope that she finds a better situation.  Luckily for her, the man who picks her up on the road takes her to a refuge for unwed and abused women.  Carol stays there and has her baby whom she names Rusty.  Rusty has developmental issues but Carol loves him more than life itself.  Years later when Carol and Rusty move into town, she meets Joe.  Joe also had a rough start in life.  His mother also died and his father was imprisoned for stealing one chicken, leaving Joe on his own.  He does the best he can but is struggling by the time a neighbor family takes him in.

Together, Carol and Joe create a home and a family.  We read about their lives and family over the decades.  There is never much money but there is always love and loyalty to their family and friends.  Eventually the story goes full circle and Carol's grandson moves into the house that Carol ran away from all those years ago.  

Simon Van Booy has created a wonderful family epic that speaks to the lives of rural poor Americans in the Depression years and afterwards.  We see the effect that factory work had on the lives of the people and how they suffered as the factories closed down.  Those who were poor struggled to get an education or find work that would sustain their families while the institutions meant to protect everyone seemed to single them out for prosecution.  I listened to this novel and the narrator got the accent of the rural South dead on.  While there is much to be horrified at in this novel, the overall message is one of love and hopefulness.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.