If ever there was a timely novel, this is the one. Since banning books has become a strategic weapon in our national culture wars, here comes an entertaining satire set in a quintessential southern town. Framed as a battle over books and a free-standing little library, it is about the influence books have in its residents’ lives and the town’s cultural norms.

This is the set up: Beverly Underwood and Lula Dean were born and raised in Troy, Georgia and have been enemies since high school. Now as middle-aged women, Beverly is on the school board, and Lula is on mission to rid the public and school libraries of all inappropriate books she’s never read. To replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged, Lula sets up a little library in front of her home filled with books she deems appropriate reading despite never having read them either. She’s judged them as suitable reading by their titles.

What Lula doesn’t know is that someone has removed her books and replaced them with banned books. Literary classics, black history books, stories about gay characters and many others replace Lula’s books on etiquette, cooking, and proper romance. The dustcovers from the removed books are put on those that had been banned.

Neighbors borrow books that surprise them given what they thought they were borrowing. But each has chosen a book just right for their situation and are personally life changing. Distinct chapters—much like in a novel of linked short stories— focus on the town’s residents, their situations, and personal epiphanies. The shift is ripe for the foundation layer of the book.

Troy, like many southern towns, revere their confederate roots and see it as a source of pride. When the story turns to reveal its history, all chaos breaks loose. I don’t want to spoil it by saying any more, but revealed truths about the town’s history are done well.

Choosing to write this with a light touch really worked. It’s a subject I’m very sensitive to. In my own town, our little free library of banned books was vandalized, the books were stolen, and replaced with a bible. There seems no end to the darkness. But a book like this is uplifting in its way and reminds us that there are flickers or hope in most unexpected places.

I hope it reaches a broad audience and not the just those on the side of freedom to read. The only downside of the book, if there was one, was the ending. I thought it went too far. It was a bit fantastical, given the rest of the book. Maybe it needed to be… I’ll have to think about that.