Meet the Author

Jojo Moyes The Giver Of Stars, Michael Joseph, £20

When it comes to bigging up sisters doing it for themselves, Jojo Moyes doesn’t horse around.

The 50-year-old author made her name with the love story Me Before You, and penned the screenplay for the 2016 film adaptation starring Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke and Sam Claf lin.

Two sequels to Me Before You – After You and Still Me – followed, but now Moyes is back with her latest offering,The Giver Of Stars.

A fictional story, it is based on the real Horseback Librarians of Kentucky – women who joined forces to deliver books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1930s.

And it, too, is set for the big screen with Universal having already bought the rights.

Moyes says: “I’d wanted for a long time to write a book about women’s friendships and the way women support other women. The older I’ve got, the more I’ve found that women are our greatest allies.”

She visited Kentucky three times and rode the routes the women who inspired the novel would have taken, basing herself in a remote mountain cabin with little contact with the outside world.

Moyes reveals:“I met this amazing woman, Barbara, who’s now about 72. Fierce and resourceful, she became the real spirit of the book.

“The first night I stayed in the tiny log cabin, built in the 1830s, where there’s no TV, no wifi, no phone, I thought,‘This is charming.’ Looking out of the window at the black woodland opposite, I thought,‘Oh God, this is

like Deliverance! I’m going to be murdered in my bed!’

“But just when I was getting spooked, Barbara called out to me to go out on the porch and from there I found that the whole of the mountainside had come alive with fireflies. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“The trees and the sky were illuminated by these brilliant pulsing white dots and from that moment I stopped being afraid.”

The book’s theme illustrate literature’s timeless appeal.

“Reading changed my life,” the author admits.“My parents made sure I went to the library every week and got the maximum amount of books out that I could.”

Moyes has sold more than 38 million books, with Me Before You the biggest seller.

Moyes reveals: “People say to me,‘Do you feel you’re never going to get beyond the success of Me Before You?’ and I think,‘Why would I?’ I was unsuccessful for eight books.

“The fact I had a book that sold all over the world was so far beyond my expectations. If people want to talk about Me Before You until I’m 92, I’ll be very happy.”