The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

This novel is a work of historical fiction that explores life in Appalachian Kentucky in the 1930s through the eyes of one woman. The author sheds light on the plight of impoverished Kentucky miners, the phenomenon of packhorse librarians who carried books and magazines through remote mountains to patrons hungry for them, and the plight of the Blue People of Kentucky.

Blue People? I’d never heard of them, so I googled to see if they were real. Oh, yes. They are. (For those interested, it’s called methemoglobinemia, which causes methemoglobin levels in the red blood cells to rise above 1 percent. It turns the skin blue, the lips purple, and the blood a chocolate brown.)

There was – is – a hill family carrying a genetic trait that causes an enzyme deficiency, giving their skin a blue hue. The protagonist of THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK (an actual place) is a Blue. Through her eyes, we experience the sense of being inferior and the fear of discrimination that was as bad for Blues as for African Americans with whom they were equated by whites.

This same woman, Cussy Mary Carter, age 19, is a packhorse librarian. She loves her job – loves books – loves seeing those she visits on her route as they begin to read. Despite the color of her skin, her patrons love her right back. So, there is a feel-good quality here.

That said, the book is about dire poverty and the illness it causes. It’s about having to live with injustice. It’s about rural Kentucky life, with its folk medicine and quaint rituals. And it’s about the ultimate triumph of good over evil … somewhat.

I listened to THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK, and there were times when I felt a piece of dialogue dragged on. But the subject, the beauty of the prose, and the overall message won me over in the end.

I did enjoy this book and do recommend it.

It’s 1936 and America is in the midst of the Depression. One of the hard hit areas is in rural Kentucky in the mountains. Work and food are scarce and entire families lose their lives to illness and starvation. The coal mines are still working but the workers are forced to work in terrible conditions and there are frequent problems that cause death to workers. Roosevelt has started the WPA (Works Progress Administration) which put many people to work. The Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky was part of the WPA and gave jobs to single women who delivered books and magazines to the impoverished people in the mountains.

Cussy Carter is a lonely 19 year old girl when she gets a job as a librarian carrying books to people. She is single, much to her father’s dismay but she feels that she will never marry because of her blue skin. She enjoys reading and gets great joy in sharing reading material to people who have no way of getting it. She also enjoys the people on her route and becomes friends to many of them. When she goes into town, she is faced with discrimination. The sign NO COLOREDS ALLOWED, applies not only to the black residents but also the few blue residents who live in the area. (Goggle Blue people of Kentucky to find out more about this group of people.)

Cussy is a wonderful main character. Because of her love of books, she is happy to be providing reading material to other people. Due to her loneliness, she is able to identify with many of the people on her book route and makes them part of her life. The mountains of Kentucky are well described and make the story even more beautiful.

This is a wonderful story about love and family, acceptance and prejudice and importantly the love of the written word. It’s this author’s best book yet and I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Bookish Firsts for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

A well-researched, heart-wrenching novel about the blue-skinned people of Kentucky during the 1930’s with lessons that will resonate in today’s world.

*The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek* is a fictional account of one of the Blue People, Cussy May Carter, who served as a librarian in the Depression-era Pack Horse Library Project. Her story is based on the actual Fugate family who lived in an isolated region of the Kentucky Appalachian Mountains. The Blue People carried a rare genetic trait that causes methemoglobinemia, a condition in which the blood carries lower levels of oxygen. Lower oxygen levels caused their skin to have a blue color. This recessive trait has almost disappeared in modern times.

Cussy May, named after the town in France where her ancestors originated, has distinctly blue skin. She tells us in the first-person about her love of books and reading, about her beloved job as a Pack Horse Librarian carrying books to isolated mountain people, and about the many services that she provides to them. Most significantly, Cussy May is the subject of intense discrimination and abuse by many, especially those town people. She’s viewed as a “colored person” which puts her in the same category as African-Americans, and which makes her vulnerable to terrible abuse. It’s not surprising that her best friend is an African-American librarian. Consequently this book is a serious look at extreme racism, at extreme poverty, about the abuses of the mining companies in the region at that time. Significantly, this story is also about the life of the mind as an escape from suffering through the joy of reading books.

The story is a dark one, and it unfolds in a long and unrelenting series of abuses, struggles and challenges that Cussy May has to overcome. She is a kind person dedicated to her books, her library patrons, and her mule. You come to admire her and want her to succeed and find happiness. And she does!

Richardson is a native of the region, she knows it very well, and her descriptions of the ecosystem are quite accurate. It’s not often I see an author knowledgeable enough to add poke sallet to a list of edibles. I highly recommend this informative and heart-warming tale.

Note: There has been considerable discussion about this book and another book about the Packhorse Library Project, *The Giver of Stars.* The two books are quite different. My view is that *The Book Woman…* is a more accurate portrayal of the grim life of poverty and the discrimination against “coloreds” during that time period. *Giver of Stars* doesn’t mention the Blue People. Although it is a finely-told yarn about two women, both Packhorse Librarians, they are engaged in an effort to maintain personal autonomy and to find love. Their story is a good one but lacks the depth of *The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.*

I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of a Kentucky packhorse librarian and the rural neighbors she was so loyal to—some of them worthy of that loyalty, some not, but that only contributed to the book woman’s likability. I’d heard of the blue skinned Kentuckians, but this book gave a poignant glimpse into what that was all about. The story provided interesting tidbits of 1930s rural society, poverty, racial attitudes, was wonderfully researched and well plotted. At times tragic, but ultimately hopeful, I’m glad to have read it!

Linda’s Book Obsession Reviews “The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek” by Kim Michele Richardson, Sourcebooks, May 7, 2019

WOW! Kudos to Kim Michele Richardson, Author of “The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek” for writing such an intriguing, intense, captivating, riveting, compelling and thought-provoking novel. I love the vivid descriptions that Kim Michele Richardson uses of the characters and landscape. The Genres for this novel are Fiction, and Historical Fiction. The time-line for this novel is the Depression in Kentucky. The story goes to the past when it pertains to the characters or events . The author describes her dramatic characters as complex and complicated.

I found two things fascinating in “The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek”. The first is how important the Book Women who carried books and magazines on mule or horse were to the poverty-stricken people in the hills. The people looked forward to literacy, and trying to be able to connect with their world and make it a little bigger and better. The hills were treacherous, and there were all kinds of dangers for the Book Women to negotiate.

The second thing that I am amazed with is the “Blue People” who actually exist in Kentucky. These people were really blue and considered “colored” and feared because others felt they were contagious, and inferior. There was terrible prejudice to these people. More information can be found in the story.

Food was scarce during the Depression, but the people were so grateful for the Book Woman to bring the books to loan, they would often want to share what little they had. In Troublesome, the people were lucky to have one woman deliver the books.

I loved how courageous and brave the Book Woman was. I highly recommend this amazing novel, especially for those readers who enjoy adventure and a thought-provoking book. I received an ARC for my honest review.

An insightful read about backwoods discrimination and making the ‘blues” an “other” discriminated group. Shows how successful FDR’s WPA was in creating jobs for women and advancing education in the backwoods. Worth a read.

Wonderful story of the librarians that went out on horsebacks in the hollers and hills of Kentucky. Also learned of the Blue people and what their syndrome is.

Ok, to be fair, I read less than 2 1/2 chapters of this book. But that’s because, within 2 1/2 chapters, the author had completely convinced me I did not want to read any more. Honestly, I expected a lot more from a bestseller. Did it become a bestseller simply because it had a really cool premise? (I mean, blue people are pretty interesting by default) Or maybe the rest of the book redeems the first 2 chapters. I honestly don’t know, because I gave up on the first page of chapter 3.

So…why did I dislike it so much? Well first off all, I found the narrator voice strangely jarring. It was written in first person, but Cussy’s voice just didn’t make sense in context. She interspersed Appalachian slang with flowery (and in my opinion, excessively verbose) descriptions/words in a way that felt very disjointed. Like she couldn’t decide whether she was from Appalachia, or Victorian England.

And her father’s entire character felt disjointed. On the one hand he seemed like a generally caring father (though wrongly convinced that his daughter needed to marry in order to be provided for and protected), but he goes about it by offering a large dowry (which doesn’t seem like a great way to find a good husband, honestly). And then, out of the multiple suitors who show up, he inexplicably decides the best choice is a cold-hearted man man 3 times his daughter’s age, who apparently has zero hygiene. He then forces her to marry this guy, despite the fact that she is literally on her knees BEGGING him not to make her marry a man she is terrified of. What kind of caring father does that??

Next we get a marital rape scene, which escalates into horrific physical abuse when Cussy fights back. And this is another thing that makes no sense to me. Her husband is apparently strong enough at 63 to physically break her bones with his bare hands while beating her, and YET, he is also so ancient and decrepit that he subsequently has a heart attack and dies from the exertion? Whaaaat???

And next thing you know, her Dad shows up to find her unconscious and her husband dead on the floor, and is suddenly all affectionate again, cradling her and telling her everything is going to be alright. But does he apologize for forcing her into the situation? No. And why on earth is he even there? Is it normal to show up randomly the day after your daughter’s wedding night to check on her? If you’re the kind of Dad who forces her to marry against her will to a man she afraid of, are you really the type who would immediately come visiting afterward?

And by the time I got to chapter 3, I was wondering WHAT THE HECK the whole fiasco was in there for anyway? First it seems like the marriage might be the conflict she has to overcome to get her book-woman job (which she can’t have if she is married), but the marriage ends almost instantly. Then I thought maybe her pregnancy could be the conflict creator, but she almost immediately aborts her baby with tansy tea, and quickly gets her book-woman job back. So we’re back where we started in chapter one. I have to assume there was SOME reason for all the drama, that it plays into the story later, but I was so annoyed with the narrator voice and the oddly disjointed actions of the characters by chapter 3, that I didn’t care to find out.

This historical fiction novel gives us food for thought on how we accept others people. Very good and easy reading.