Night Came With Many Stars

Written by Simon Van Booy

Narrated by Courtney Patterson

In Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol's daddy lost his thirteen-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy's spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light.



"What you give in this world," an old man tells his grandson, "will be given back to you." Those words illuminate the actions within this unforgettable novel and its connected characters. A young man survives two nearly fatal accidents. A black family saves an orphaned white boy. A pregnant teenager is rescued by the side of the road. An autistic teenager is given his first job. Each incident grows in meaning and power over many decades as we see connections sometimes felt but not always apparent to the people themselves. "Everything was moving," observes Samuel (Carol's grandson) in the Kentucky woods. "An invisible force that was everywhere, and made everything touch."



Told by a master storyteller, Night Came with Many Stars is a rare novel that reveals how wondrous, mysterious, and magically connected life can be—the light Simon Van Booy creates in this novel illuminates our own lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jun 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781696603522

Simon Van Booy

Simon Van Booy was born in London and grew up in rural Wales and the suburbs of London. He is the author of three novels and two collections of short stories, including The Illusion of Separateness, The Secret Lives of People in Love, and Love Begins in Winter, which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award in 2009. He lives in New York.

Reviews for Night Came With Many Stars

[zachmontana · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Story of several generations of family in rural Kentucky. Unexpected topic and fluency of subject by an author from Wales who played Rugby and moved to Kentucky at 18 on a scholarship to play American football, but apparently he bonded with the culture there. Characters are well developed and interesting/believable. I read this book over several months to my teenage daughter and the style of writing did not work for that kind of read. The Author moves in each chapter to another character and time and it was very hard for most of the book to remember who is who and how the previous story of them which could have been told several chapters and many pages ago related. Act the minimum, an Ancestry Chart of this family at the beginning to refer back to would have helped immensely! Seemed quite realistic in a sad way for many parts, but the ending kind of gave us satisfaction that the story was worth wading thru.

[janerawoof · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful, tender family saga of several decades, covering several generations of a family from before the second world war until the 2000's. The novel also tells of their friends and others who play a big part in their lives and shaping who they are. Exquisitely written, focusing mostly on Carol, sold as a teenager to a man her father lost to in a card game, and her grandson, Samuel, who struggles to find himself. Carol runs away and that begins her story. They inhabit alternating chapters, interspersed with the lives of those who influence them in some way. Heartwarming but sometimes heart wrenching.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just some fine story-telling, about humans making the best of what life hands out. Beginning with a young girl whose good-for-nothing father loses her in a card game in 1933, thereby doing her what turns out to be an enormous favor, we proceed through generations of her offspring and their contacts to a fitting 21st century ending. Nothing is predictable, but everything feels inevitable. Set in Kentucky, it's reminiscent of Silas House's fiction.