“How many times had the hunger pangs tempted him? Set his belly afire for the wanting? Yet, his love for words and books was stronger.”
Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (Sourcebooks 2019) is historical fiction set in the 1930s in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky – deep in the heart of Appalachia. The novel centers around two points of US history that I was unaware of until rumors of plagiarism brought this novel and another one, one written by a more well-known author, to my attention. (The fact I’m reviewing this one and not the other tells you where I fall in that discussion.) The Pack Horse Library Project was a Works Progress Administration program that delivered books to remote regions of the Appalachian Mountains between 1935-1943. The program often employed women, called Book Women, who would traverse rough terrain on horse or mule back, encountering dangerous animals (and people), to bring books to their patrons. These Book Women brought books to over 100,000 people. This novel follows one such woman, Cussy Mary Carter, who initially rode as a single woman and then again as a widow. (Married women could not work at the time.)
Cussy is unique in another way in that she’s one of Kentucky’s “Blue People.” Cussy and her family are based on the Fugate family of Troublesome Creek. Martin Fugate came to Kentucky from France in the 1820s and local legend says he was blue. He married and four of his children were blue. This blueness continued to be passed down, and in the 1960s, it was finally discovered that the Fugate family had a genetic condition called methemoglobiemia, which is passed through a recessive gene that flourished due to incest within the region. Richardson plays with the timeline a bit as it relates to the medical discovery as she has Cussy serve as the subject that helps uncover the root of the blueness and the cure.
A person with skin the color of a blueberry wasn’t within the realm of understanding for most, and the superstitions and discriminatory nature of those in Troublesome Creek made life quite difficult for both the real Fugates and the fictional Carters. Cussy’s father is a miner, and his goal is to see her married to someone who will take care of her after he is gone. Cussy has no desire to wed, and the only men who express interest in marrying a despised “blue” are those intrigued by the promise of land and the promise of her very attractive but still blue body.
While the heart of the story remains with books and the bridge they build between “a blue” and the residents of Troublesome Creek, the novel is peppered with tragedy after tragedy. But Cussy, through Richardson’s writing, focuses more on the books and the good and glosses over the bad. For example, more time is spent discussing the pineapple Lifesaver candy a starving student gives her in thanks for the books that won’t keep him fed or alive than is spent discussing her rape, assault, and subsequent abortion or the numerous deaths. It’s a choice, but I do wish we’d seen some of these things fleshed out a bit more.
The story-telling element is extremely simple. There are some hiccups – repetitiveness, inconsistent dialect, and some small plot holes – but these hiccups aren’t that damning, and the simple style makes it a palatable, quick read.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 