Novel Stars earns Jojo stripes
CHAMPIONING the cause of women is a subject close to Jojo Moyes’s heart.
The 50-year-old author made her name with poignant love story Me Before You, in which young Louisa Clark takes a job caring for quadriplegic Will Traynor, with whom she forms an unlikely bond.
Moyes wrote the screenplay for the 2016 film adaptation starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin, which took more than £150million at the box office.
Two sequels to Me Before You – After You and Still Me – followed but now Moyes is back on the stand-alone trail, this time with The Giver of Stars, a fictional story based on the real Horseback Librarians of Kentucky, a group of women who delivered books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains in the 30s.
She said: “With The Giver of Stars I thought, this is so much a book but I felt it would make a great film as well.
“We have the brilliant writer and director Ol Parker (known for Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel). He’s working on the script and it’s really exciting.”
She came across the story in 2017 of the amazing women who would ride across difficult terrain to take books to the poor.
Jojo added: “It fitted with something I’d wanted to do for a long time, which was to write a book about women’s friendship and the way that women support other women.”
Jojo visited Kentucky three times to research the locations the women had visited and rode the routes they would have taken, immersing herself in the sounds, scents and sights – as well as being introduced to an inspiring character.
She added: “I met this amazing woman, Barbara, who’s now about 72, who became the real spirit of the book because she’s fierce and resourceful.” ● The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes is published by Michael Joseph, £20. Available now.