The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
By Kim Michele Richardson
This week's book was for my church’s book group. When we were pitching books for the upcoming year, this title was the book I was most excited for. I was really hoping it was going to be a good book because I love books and ever since watching Christy (that show from the early '90s staring Kellie Martin and Tyne Daly) I have had a fascination with the people of the Appalachian mountains. Well my expectations were met; I loved this book!
The story is about a young woman in the Appalachian mountains in 1936. She is one of the Blue People Kentucky, more specifically of Troublesome Creek. She is librarian of the Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky, which were traveling librarians that would ride around the mountains bringing people books. I had never heard about the Blue People until this book and had to look up what they looked like. It was quite shocking when I did my Google search and saw how blue they truly were. The disorder is called methemoglobinemia, it is actually a problem in the blood, due to inbreeding. The last person that is known to have this issue with their blood was born in the 1970's.
The main character Cussy, is African American and Blue as well. The book talked a lot about poverty and racism in that time and part of the country. A lot of the people she deals with, including the pastor and doctors in those parts are just horrible to her. They call her the Blue Ghost and not only treat her badly for being African American, but she is Blue! She tries to take a medication that would take the blue out of her skin pigment, but it makes her violently ill and the town's people still treat her horrible. There are only a handful of people that aren't terrible to her, including a young man named Jackson that in all honesty is too good to be true, he kind of reminded me of a Hallmark Movie guy.
The level of poverty and lack of education is just heartbreaking. People are starving to death and might not even know how to read. From a chunky book lover, the situation sounds dreadful. But Cussy has a true passion to bring books to these people that are in such a need for books, and maybe an escape from their daily life. No matter how people treat her, she is so strong and nice. I really enjoyed that one of the complaints that one of the fathers has is that the books his family is reading is distracting the kids and his wife from their work. We complain about electronics today, but books would do just the same thing.
It is just a beautifully written book while still very informative. I can't recommend this book enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment