Pa, I have me a good job making us twenty- eight dollars a month delivering books to folks who’s needing the book learning in these hills, says 19-year-old Cussy Mary Carter.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson pictures the struggles, joys, heartaches and triumphs of Cussy, a Kentucky blue person and a pack horse librarian. While the young woman is fictional, she represents all of the real life Kentucky Blue People and the thousand women who were able to support themselves and their families through the library program.
Until I read this book, I had never heard of this library program nor of the Blue People of Kentucky. However in reading this novel, I was immersed in historical fiction, my favorite way to learn. Stories rich in the annals of yesteryear emote so much more than mere facts. Stories show us how people react to time and place.
Centering this book are old photos of the real life book women who gathered what few books the government sent, those donated, newspapers and magazines, scrapbooks filled with recipes and household hints clipped from beyond-repair volumes, and most importantly, children’s books.
Librarians
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who championed this program, says, “If the women are willing to do things because it’s going to help their neighbors, I think we’ll win out.”
Author Heather Henson says, “Going into the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky was going back in time. No running water, no electricity, very few schools. Families lived way up in the mountains. A creek bed, that would be the road.”
From 1935 through 1943, this WPA project reached 1.5 million Kentuckians in 48 counties, especially those in the Appalachian mountains. Each librarian averaged traveling 100-120 miles up into the mountains each week.
By 1933, unemployment in Appalachia had risen to 40 percent, a statistic which gave way to another: 60 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. Hundreds of coal mines had been closed because factories nationwide had been shuttered. It was the hardest hit area in the country by the Great Depression.
Blue People
Around 1800, a French orphan Martin Fugate and his redheaded American bride settled on the banks of Eastern Kentucky’s Troublesome Creek. Unbeknownst to either, each carried a recessive gene for Methemoglobinemia, a rare heredity blood disorder also found in some Alaskan Eskimos. And it was that knowledge that led doctors to test the Kentucky Blue People in the 20th century.
Controversy
Today, critics question the similarities between The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and The Giver of Stars by British author Jo Jo Moyes. In 2016, Richardson, a native Kentuckian, alerted her agent about her desire to write her book and submitted the final manuscript in 2017. Sourcebooks released Book Woman in May 2019.
According to Moyes, she read about the pack horse librarians in the Smithsonian Magazine in 2017. With that seed, she composed her book around Alice Van Cleve, a transplanted English woman with an unhappy marriage and violent father-in-law. This book focuses on the friendship and support of a half dozen librarians. It was released in October 2019 by Pamela Dorman Books and Universal Studios has picked up the movie rights.
After reading both books, I agree with critic Melissa Gouty who says, “What happens when two authors write books on the same topic? No crime there…Thousands of books on World War II exist. That doesn’t mean they are plagiarized. It just means that lots of people look at an event through lots of different lenses.”
However, I found The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, written by a Kentuckian, more authentic. Of course, the protagonist in Giver of Stars is an outsider created by an outsider. She’s certainly a creditable character, and Moyes has done her research. But of the two, I found Richardson’s book more memorable. Regardless, it’s time the pack horse librarians are given their due.
Richardson says, “For 80 years these brave, heroic Kentucky packhorse librarians were ignored and only given a nod in a couple of amazing children’s books…Their courage and dedication for spreading literacy to the poorest pocket of the United States—the hills of eastern Kentucky and during its most violent era, deserved more in literary history. I felt it would be a privilege to tell their story. And when I learned of the blue-skinned people of Kentucky who suffered from congenital Methemoglobinemia, I was determined to give them a voice they’d long been denied.”
2020
Comments