First, let me say that I LOVED THIS BOOK!

Cussy was born and raised in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky in the 1930s. She is one of the "Blue People of Kentucky" - people with a recessive gene that causes their skin to be blue in appearance. The blue people are treated as being lesser than everyone else along with the other "colored people".

There is much poverty in Troublesome Creek, and many cannot make it to town and school from the remote areas where they live. So, the government has hired people to deliver reading materials to them. Cussy is one of these mobile librarians, and she takes extra care of her people, bringing them reading materials, knowledge, and SO MUCH MORE.

A wonderful historical novel about the difference one person can make for others. And the power of acceptance.

Thoroughly enjoyed this. Much more than I expected. The story of Cussy Mary and her life as a book woman and a Kentucky blue. Suffering from a congenital conditions making her skin blue she suffers all the racism and suspicion that 'colored' people do. It starts as a harsh bleak look at life in an unforgiving place but gradually Cussy's relationship with her book borrowing patrons shows how much she is needed and appreciated.

This is a fascinating historical novel about the Blue People of Kentucky and the Pack Horse Librarian program. The writing is so atmospheric that you feel like you are right there in the Kentucky mountains in 1936 with the well crafted characters. It is gritty and raw with beautiful moments of small human kindnesses. The last bit of the book felt rushed with too many events packed in, but this book is definitely worth a read.

I love anything books and I loved this one about the blue skinned people of Kentucky.
I loved that the main character fought for literacy for them
Thanks for allowing me to read and review this book

As a librarian, it would be hard not to love this story of Bluet, a mule-riding librarian, determined to bring books and learning to isolated people in the Appalachian mountains. I was fascinated, as well, to learn about the real-life Blue people of Kentucky, classified as colored, and denied rights alongside African Americans. The book moves through the daily challenges of poverty-filled life at a leisurely pace, befitting the rural setting, and while in the beginning, I found it easy to put down, by the end, I was thoroughly enthralled with Bluet and the people around her and hated for the story to end. Highly recommended. Review based on an ARC provided through NetGalley.

I’m going to be in the minority here – I struggled to fall in love with The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and I’ve not got a bloody clue as to why. It had everything I love in a book – a solid story, historical accuracy (I’ll get onto this bit later) with a smidge of smoochy and super cute romance, yet it didn’t sink its claws into me until I hit the 60% (ish) mark.

Set in rural (and horrifically prejudice) ’30s Kentucky, Cussy Mary is a Pack Horse Librarian (an institution set up to get reading materials out to rural areas) and a damn good one at that. This is a story about self-sacrifice and making changes to a broken world in the face of adversity. Every damn day she’d either be coaxing her fiercely loyal mule up pitch-black hills whilst watching out for snakes or ‘worse’ or at the centre gathering up books and magazines/anything so that she could spend even more time making scrapbooks for her patrons’ specific needs.

Books. Before. Bigots

Her one ‘flaw’? Having blue skin and being the last of her kind. That was it. Didn’t matter what good she did, how she enriched people’s lives or the literal starvation she endured so others got food in their bellies, racists will always ruin everything.

Whilst many people might think that Richardson is using a different tactic/twist to show what racism is like, and technically you might be right, this shit is all true. People with blue skin did indeed live in Troublesome Creek. There’s an article about it here and it’s fascinating.


"And I ain’t any different than the white squirrel we’ve seen on Thousandstick Trace that scampers alongside the red and grays. They’re all just squirrels, all the same."

That’s the plot covered but what about the characters themselves? Cussy May is endearing. You can hear her accent in the words and by the end of the book, I just wanted to turn up on her doorstep with every book I could carry. You’ll get attached to her, you’ll want her to succeed and you’ll shed a few tears for her. Richardson did an excellent job of wiggling right into my heart.

I just wish I could have loved this book a little more because I reckon a lot of humans will love this book. Oh, and it’s only 320 pages so well worth spending the time on.

Review will be published on my blog on 29th April.
Rating 3.5 out of 5 (rounded up)

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek merges two uniquely fascinating histories plucked right out of the wild Kentucky mountains. Before I go any further, I’ll draw your attention to this extract from the author’s notes:

'Inspired by the true and gentle historical blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse librarians born of Roosevelt’s New Deal Acts, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek showcases a fascinating and important footnote of history. Methemoglobinemia is the extremely rare disease that causes skin to be blue. In the United States, it was first found in the Fugates of Troublesome Creek in eastern Kentucky. In 1820, Martin Fugate, a French orphan, came to Kentucky to claim a land grant on the banks of Troublesome Creek in Kentucky’s isolated wilderness. Martin married a full-blooded, red-headed, white-skinned Kentuckian named Elizabeth Smith. They had seven children, and out of those, four were blue. It was insurmountable and against all odds that, oceans away, Martin would find a bride who carried the same blue-blood recessive gene.'

~~~

'The Pack Horse Library Project was established in 1935 and ran until 1943. The service was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) and an effort to create jobs for women and bring books and reading material into Appalachia, into the poorest and most isolated areas in eastern Kentucky that had few schools, no libraries, and inaccessible roads. The librarians were known as “Book Women,” though there were a very small number of men among their ranks. These fearsome Kentucky librarians travelled by horse, mule, and sometimes by foot and even rowboat to reach the remotest areas, in creeks and up crags, into coves, disconnected pockets, and black forests and to towns named Hell-fer-Sartin, Troublesome, and Cut Shin, sometimes traveling as much as one hundred or more miles a week in rain, sleet, or snow. Pack Horse librarians were paid twenty-eight dollars a month and had to provide their own mounts. Books and reading materials and places for storing and sorting the material were all donated and not supplied by the WPA’s payroll. With few resources and little financial help, the Pack Horse librarians collected donated books and reading materials from the Boy Scouts, PTAs, women’s clubs, churches, and the state health department. The librarians came up with ingenious ways to provide more reading resources, such as making scrapbooks with collected recipes and housecleaning tips that the mountain people passed on to them in gratitude for their service. Despite the financial obstacles, the harshness of the land, and the sometimes fierce mistrust of the people during the most violent era of eastern Kentucky’s history, the Pack Horse service was accepted and became dearly embraced. These clever librarians turned their traveling library program into a tremendous success. In the years of its service, over one thousand women served in the Pack Horse Project, and it was reported that nearly 600,000 residents in thirty eastern Kentucky counties considered “pauper counties” were served by them.'

Both of these incredible histories are merged within The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, deep in the Kentucky mountains. This is hardscrabble life like you wouldn’t believe. The only source of income is from coal mining, but the companies are only after one thing, as much black gold as they can get, with the minimum wage and the minimum standards of employment with no regard for safety. People aren’t even paid with money, but with a credit system that allows them to only shop at the company store. The corruption is entrenched and those seeking to unionise more often than not ‘disappear’.

“Daughter, take a look at the fright out there. They’re murderers, gun thugs, them Company men are. Something must be done. Folks are worse off than before they arrived.” Pa coughed. “We’re working seventeen -hour days down on a rocky floor with bloody kneecaps in a black hole for scratch, and all the while fearing the next cave-in, the next blast that sends us to our fiery grave.”

Violence is rife, mistrust runs deep and inbreeding is par for the course. Law enforcement is loose, dependent upon access, which is not widespread given the way people live dotted all through the mountains. I studied some units of geography at university, one of them on the social geography of North America. I remember this area, the Appalachian mountains, and this was where I first came across my knowledge of the blue mountain people. I’ve never read a novel that has taken the reader so deeply into a hidden history before, and done it with such a depth of understanding for the area being written about.

‘A woman violated would be damned— persecuted— and dismissed from her job like Postmistress Gracie Banks had been after she was raped last year and told. And there’d been more than a few other Gracie Banks who’d blabbered. Rarely was justice served and then only if the woman’s kin took it upon themselves to mete out punishment in a quiet, lawless way. Disgraced, soiled like that, even womenfolk would silence, shun, and cast blame on the tainted female— make good ’n’ sure she’d carry the sin of the man’s stain for the rest of her days. Over the years, I’d seen that burden in a few women’s hooded eyes around town. I remember Mama telling Pa when she thought I weren’t listening that the female’s silence let those vile godless men walk free among their prey, boldly pass their sufferers on the streets of Troublesome with a sly tip to the hat, a smug pat to the crotch.’

~~~

‘I know’d Harriett’s mama had married kin, that her kind had relations with close relatives. It just didn’t show up in her pasty-white flesh, only in the small eyes hugging her sky-saluting nose. Her clan was the same as most kinfolk in these parts. Courting was hard, and a horse and mule could only travel so far, making it difficult to meet and marry outside these hills. Still, my great-grandpa’d done just that, all the way from France . And here Harriett was the one who pined after her cousin.’

Against this backdrop, Cussy Mary – or Bluet as she is more commonly, yet less preferably, called – traverses the mountains delivering and collecting library books to those who wouldn’t otherwise see a book ever, much less learn to read one. She reads to people, teaches others to read, spends time with the lonely, delivers books to a remote school and a community of mountain folk that never leave their holler. This novel is a testament about the importance of reading in changing lives, the joy and connection that can stem from books, and the way ignorance can be pierced through education.

‘Being able to return to the books was a sanctuary for my heart. And a joy bolted free, lessening my own grievances, forgiving spent youth and dying dreams lost to a hard life, the hard land, and to folks ’ hard thoughts and partialities.’

~~~

‘Mr. Moffit didn’t like folks who weren’t his color. He used to demand that I stay put in the yard . But his longing for the printed word soon weakened his demands, and he eventually allowed Angeline to bring me inside to read at the small wooden table, so desperate was he for the books to help him escape his misery, misery at never having enough to fill his belly, not even enough spare coins to buy himself a couple of bullets to maybe shoot a rabbit, and now the misery at the poison inching its way deeper into him from his gunshot.’

~~~

‘I loved that the books were growing their little minds. Pa was wrong. They needed books more than anything else this place had to offer. They were starved for the learning, the know-how on leaving this hard land for a better, softer one.’

Cussy Mary is blue. Genuinely blue. She’s about the loneliest person I’ve ever read about. People fear her more than any other type of person. Going to town is arduous and incredibly painful. Her job is her life, and out on the mountains, delivering books, her colour matters less, but it takes a long time, and many awful things to happen, before she can accept herself just the way she was born. Her pain brought me to tears over and over, not just because of the prejudice she was subjected to, but also because of the lack of self-worth she was filled with on account of being blue. She had so much to offer, yet most people just wanted to keep their distance and ridicule her. I spent a good portion of this novel filled with fear for her. There was this feeling that pervaded where you had a sense that to many, she was less than human. It was so wrong, just so, so wrong.

‘I touched the baby’s hand, my own eyes filling, my mind grappling with losses, the unbearable pain of loneliness. Nary a townsfolk, not one God-fearing soul, had welcomed me or mine into town, their churches, or homes in all my nineteen years on this earth. Instead, every hard Kentucky second they’d filled us with an emptiness from their hate and scorn. It was as if Blues weren’t allowed to breathe the very same air their loving God had given them, not worthy of the tiniest spoonful He’d given to the smallest forest critter. I was nothing in their world. A nothingness to them. And I looked into Angeline’s dying eyes and saw my truths, and the truths that would be her daughter’s.’

~~~

“Well, them cloths are a lot like folks. Ain’t much difference at all. Some of us is more spiffed up than others, some stiffer, and still, some softer. There’s the colorful and dull, ugly and pretty, old, new ’uns. But in the end we’s all fabric, cut from His cloth. Fabric, and just that.”

The poverty depicted within this novel is startlingly disturbing. People literally starving to death. Whole families becoming extinct, pride preventing them from accessing welfare, prejudice preventing them from seeking help. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is unlike any other novel I’ve ever read. Starkly beautiful in its prose, confronting and desperately painful to comprehend. That it’s so deeply grounded in truth just made it all the more profound. Cussy’s story made my heart hurt, yet despite the grim reality punctuating every single scene throughout the novel, hope sparked in the most unlikely of places. It’s an incredible novel. One of the best I’ve read.

‘I curled myself into a tight ball on the blood-soaked Kentucky soil, wailing for Henry and all the Henrys in these dark hollows who’d never be a common grown-up. Stuck forever as Peter Pans.’

~~~

“This old land.” Jackson stared off. “It sure makes a man yearn for it and want to flee it altogether.”

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek will take you to a place you’ve probably heard little of during a time when life was perhaps at its most lacking and desperate. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough, which is why I’ve included so many quotes. It really does speak for itself.


Thanks is extended to Sourcebooks Landmark via NetGalley for providing me with a copy of The Book Woman Of Troublesome Creek for review.

Review will be posted in my blog on 7th May 2019.

I love reading about something based on fact that I have no knowledge about. That’s exactly what The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek offers in telling about the rare Blue People and the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky. The two are smoothly melded into a very entertaining read set in 1936.

Kim Michele Richardson does a great job portraying the Appalachia people and times. The struggles ring true throughout the book, and you are on the journey with these characters as each page turns meeting a rich cast and their hardships and joys.

Many thanks to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Landmark for allowing me the opportunity to provide an honest review for this book. Five stars is well deserved here.

Cussy is a self-taught librarian, part of the pack horse library system established by FDR to bring books to the most remote corners of Appalachia. She has many obstacles to overcome, chief among them the fact that she is the last of the Blue People, a cluster of folks back in the hills with a recessive genetic blood disorder that tinges their skin blue. As such, she is considered "colored" by everyone in her community, and subject to all of their prejudice, both petty and significant. In addition, her father is determined to marry her off. because he is a miner with a lung disease and wants someone to care for her when he is gone. But Cussy is passionate about her librarian work, and can only hold the job as long as she is single. The portrait of the back hills poverty, starvation, and ignorance is heartbreaking, balanced a bit by a few positive characters who offer a glimpse of human charity. The true story of the Blue People and the research that was conducted on them is fascinating, and fictitious Cussy brings their situation to life.

This is a beautiful book about family, faith, friendship, and love. I cried tears of joy and sorrow and was left feeling humbled by the strength of the people who lived through such a difficult time in an unforgiving land. So many were dying of starvation, yet they would give away their last bite of food to show gratitude for a bit of kindness....and knowledge.

Cussy Mary and her pa show the value of character over color in a backwoods town steeped in ignorance, While Cussy Mary sacrifices nearly everything to bring the healing power of books to her patrons, her pa risks his life fighting for miners' rights in a mine run by a company so greedy and cruel they could give the mob some competition.

I highly recommend this novel. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

The love of the printed word is strong even among the poor and vulnerable . This book is an example of that. Set in the hills of Kentucky this book chronicles the history of the Pack Horse Library and the blue-skinned people. Cussy Mary’s love of books was powerful. She traveled to remote areas to deliver books and the printed word to those who were the malnourished, lonely and poverty-stricken. Though their hardships were many the traveling libraries brought conversations , knowledge and happiness to many. This book also dealt with the harsh reality of being different and how debilitating that can be. However amidst this poverty this is also a book of immense love and the ability to prevail.

The author has woven a wonderful tale. It is a story of bravery, hopelessness and despair and the joy found in small pieces of life. This historical fiction book has so many facets that I enjoyed including the story of the Blue People of Kentucky and the Pack Horse Librarian project of the 1930’s. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read an advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a fascinating adventure which contained beautiful descriptions of the Kentucky backwoods. It tells the tale of the first mobile packhorse library during the Depression and one particular woman in particular who fervently believed in the healing power of reading.
The author does a wonderful job of recounting the history of the blue people and the poverty and prejudice that surrounded their lives. This was historical fiction at it’s best.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek was an interesting read. Quite vivid in the first two chapters, I wasn't sure I wanted to read the entire story. I continued on, and learned about the blue people in Kentucky, something I had never heard about until now. The overall story was good, the ending was somewhat disappointing. (I thought it would end differently) It was a good story, but one I probably won't read again.

Delightful book based on some fascinating scraps of history that i’ll bet you’ve never heard before. There is the WPA librarian pack horse project, that hired mostly young females to provide their own mount and pack saddle and carry books into the hills of Kentucky (at great danger) to people who would have never had the advantage of all that books provide otherwise. Then there is the part of the story about the “blue people,” who carried a recessive gene that made their skin blue. They were considered “colored” and discriminated against in every way. This wonderful book tells the story of a blue pack horse librarian. You MUST read it - this book is important and endearing! You MUST read it!

Reading The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek was like sitting on an old wooden rocker on the porch of an old rickety cabin listening to a granny telling of life in the coves and hollers of Kentucky. What a rough, hardscrabble life it was, filled with burdens and griefs, but also with love and small happinesses.

Book Woman, Cussy Mary, was a ‘Blue’. Blues are people, mostly from Kentucky, who had a congenital blood disorder that caused their skin to be blue. (It’s true. I googled it.) Cussy Mary was considered ‘colored’ because of this blueness and faced the same prejudices because of her skin color that blacks did.

Cussy Mary, riding her mule Junia, brought her Pack Horse library with its books and magazines to her patrons and touched the lives of so many; even mine.

What a beautifully written story. There were parts that made me tear up; some were sad tears, some were happy. There were parts that made my heart smile. BTBWoTC includes many historical settings, including a history of the Blue people, living in Appalachia, Troublesome Creek, the Pack Horse project, and so much more.

A sincere thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book. It was definitely my pleasure. I absolutely loved it and recommend it to all my reading friends. This one deserves more than five stars. Well done, Ms. Richardson.

"The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek" ties together two interesting ideas, both of which are based on factual information. I had read other books about the "book women" who traveled on horseback to bring books to people in the far remote areas of the Appalachians. However, I had never heard of the "blue people" of the Kentucky hills. I did a little background research about these people, whose skin color is caused by a recessive genetic aberration. As recent as 1975, "blue people" still lived in the Troublesome Creek area. These folks originated with one person who came over to America from Europe. This is the first book I ever came across that described these people. That made for an interesting read. The determination of the young "book woman" in the story caught my interest, as did the intriguing first few pages that made me want to read on. If you are looking for a different kind of "librarian" book, check out this one!

I received this book from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

I loved this book. The language is well done, which is difficult with the book being set in a different time period and an area with heavy inflections and manner of speaking. This remains accessible and interesting to readers.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Richardson has hit a home run with this one. Well-written, fast-paced, historically accurate and heartwarming, the Book Woman of Troublesome Creek focuses on the significance of two groups of people; Book Women and the rare blue people of Kentucky. In the 1930's the federal government backed a program in which women (and some men) traveled by horseback to bring books and other reading material to those living in remote, mountainous areas. At the same time there lived a family in Troublesome Creek called the Fugate family, half of whom had blue skin due to a rare medical condition, who were often ostracized for their color. Richardson brings the two together in the tale of Cussy Mary, a Blue who works as a Book Woman.and travels to bring the written word to her isolated neighbors. The story is fascinating, and I highly recommend this one!

This book tells the story of Cussy Carter, a blue lady, who is a rural Kentucky packhorse librarian in the 1930’s. The Pack Horse Library Project was established by President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1935 to create jobs for women and to bring books into Appalachia. Racism ran deep in Appalachia and this was a serious problem for Cussy, because she had blue skin, a condition brought about by a rare genetic disorder that causes a blue pigmentation. It took a very strong woman and the power of books to deal with this prejudice. It’s an incredible story of true grit, much pain and tenderness. This is an incredibly book. I love it. I highly recommend it. Advance reader copy was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.