The Keeper of Stars

The Keeper of Stars takes place in multiple locations, but its primary setting is a fictional small town in Tennessee called Sims Chapel. Sim Chapel is supposed to be located northeast of Pigeon Forge, in the Smoky Mountains near Douglas Lake; it most likely takes its name from Sims Chapel Road and Sims Chapel Baptist Church, prominent real-life landmarks on the southern shore of Douglas Lake. This area of Tennessee is covered in rolling hills and low mountains, with small towns dotted around the heavily forested landscape. Douglas Lake is a 44-square-mile reservoir created from a damming of the French Broad River in the 1940s and has been a major recreational site since that time. The lake contains many small islands and is fed by numerous creeks and rivers. Parrott Island, where Jack and Ellie have two of their most significant dates during the summer of 1950, is a fictional version of one of these islands; it might be named for Parrott’s Chapel, a community in the same area south of Douglas Lake.

In the 1950s, rural Tennessee was undergoing a demographic shift because of the rising cost of farming, and many people were leaving the small towns to work in larger cities.