Moonlight School

Lucy Wilson has led a privileged yet lonely life in Kentucky after the death of her mother. When Lucy’s father remarries, she reluctantly accepts a position to assist Cora Wilson Stewart, the first female superintendent of education in Morehead. She is stunned to learn she will be traveling into the hills to be a scribe for the mountain people, many of whom are illiterate. Shocked by the poverty the mountain people face, Lucy pities them. But with the help of Cora and a schoolmaster named Brother Wyatt, Lucy hatches a plan to help the adults in the mountains learn to read by teaching literacy classes on moonlit nights. Readers will see Lucy grow from a sheltered girl to a young woman who is learning where God is leading her. Lucy comes to the conclusion that her easy life made her poor in spirit, unlike the mountain people, who may have less money but are rich in their faith. While this example is used to show Lucy’s overall growth, it comes across as romanticizing poverty. Fisher (On a Coastal Breeze) writes the speech of the mountain people in dialect.