The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson, as any good book will do, has opened my eyes yet again to a subject I had never even heard of.  The book brings to life all the prejudice that people have about things they just don't understand.  It never has to make sense or have any basis in reality, people seem to just be afraid of things without explanation.

It is a delightful novel on its own merits, but coming out at this point with everything that is happening in the United States, it is so much more poignant.   It is also fascinating that there really were people living in Kentucky with blue skin color, that was inherited from generation to generation and it turned out to be a medical phenomenon. 

The story line follows a young woman named Cussy Mary, who lives with her father in the rural mountains of Kentucky.  Their family has been living there for generations and in each generation there are people who skin is colored blue.  Cussy Mary, also nicknamed Bluet, has been told she is the last in long line of blue skinned people in her family.  They are miners by trade, and discriminated against just as are the people with black skin color.  But Cussy Mary knows how to read and write which gives her a chance to step out of the life she was born into.  She is finds a way to get an impressive position as a traveling librarian, so now she becomes known around the county as Book Woman.  She travels by mule throughout the area, miles a day, delivery books and magazines to people to read.  She creates friendships and helps people as she goes from farmstead to home along her very rustic route.  The book describes the area and the people beautifully. It also creates the atmosphere and the feelings of the people vividly. 

This novel really makes you think about what you have and do not.  All of us have probably wished for something we see in other people and envied.  In the end if we have received it, the thing or the new look does not usually give us the satisfaction we would have thought.  In a way, that is what Cussy finds, happiness though fragile is about living your best life, being your best self.