The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Author: Kim Michele Richardson
This is the second book I’ve read in the last few months about the Packhorse Library Project of Kentucky and the women who delivered library books by horseback (or mule) in the Kentucky mountains during the Great Depression. This project was part of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and was championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, who asked libraries to donate their old, duplicate, and damaged books to the cause. The location for this story: Appalachia at the time of the Great Depression. Although it is focused on the themes of the rural lifestyle, coal mining, poverty, and the joy found in words and reading, the author brings the locals to life in all their complexity, so they are interesting to all of us no matter our background.
The lives of the women delivering books and magazines to sometimes illiterate mountain folk over great distances and rugged terrain is an interesting enough subject. But even more interesting to me is the medical condition (methemoglobinemia) that caused a very few of the white population to appear slightly blue. They were known as the blue-skinned people of Kentucky. In this story, the main character, Cussy Mary Carter, often known as Bluet, is one of the last of the “blues” and is offered a cure of sorts by a local doctor interested in diagnosing the disorder. Another related theme is that the blue-skinned people were widely discriminated against as “colored” along with any other non-white residents.
19-year-old Cussy Mary develops concern and even fondness for several of the people along her route while she and her protective mule, Junia, carry news, fend off threats, and still make it home in time to send her “blue” father, Elijah Carter, off to walk to his night shift at the coal mine. Cussy Mary finds such personal joy in reading that she wants to share it with all who are interested throughout her route. Her closest friends are those who share her love of words and books.
In addition to my recommendation, this book scored 4.24 stars on Goodreads and 4.7 stars at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon. It is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and earned a 2019 Library Reads Best Book award. For those of you who enjoy historical fiction, this is a good choice. And for anyone interested in or unfamiliar with the WPA book delivery project or the blue people of Kentucky, give this novel a try.
One final point: A couple months ago, I reviewed The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes. In that review, I mentioned that, on the internet, there was an interesting question of “alarming similarities” mentioned in relation to Jojo Moyes’ book and Kim Michele Richardson’s novel The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (see https://www.kirkusreviews.com). Both books cover the same subject and are available at our local library. And although I found The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek a better read, I found the comparison kind of like taking two friends to an event and asking each to write about it afterward. Of course, you’d get similar accounts but perhaps focused on different aspects of the event. In this case, I found Richardson’s characters more authentic and the story more compelling. But I’ll leave the decision about the similarity of the two books up to you. Happy reading!
