Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

Set in 1936, this historical fiction follows 19-year-old Cussy Mary Carter in her new job as a Pack Horse Librarian delivering reading materials to the remote hill people of the Appalachian Mountains. Cussy Mary is not like the other pack horse librarians: she and her father are the last of the Blue People of Kentucky. That's right, their skin, or more accurately their blood, has a blue hue to it and they are considered to be "colored" by the segregationist white community where they live.

Click here to view the history of the Courting Candles  

Part way through the book, Cussy Mary's Pa realizes he is slowly dying from working in the mines for so many years, so he decides it's time to find someone to take care of his daughter after he's gone. The book talks about how he uses a courting candle to time the length of the suitor's visits, which might have looked something like the candle pictured above.

Cussy Mary, sometimes called Bluet because of her color, worked hard to find books that she knew her patrons would like, including new titles like The Stars Looked Down, Doctor Dolittle, and books by authors like John Steinbeck. Cussy Mary did her very best to get these new, at the time, titles to her patrons so they could enjoy books the way she does. 

 

Unlike the hill people of Kentucky, we don't have to wait for a pack horse librarian to bring us a book every week or two. We can log on to Bridges or Libby on any device and read from a screen. If you'd like to have a librarian pick books you might enjoy, you can also fill out our google form and a librarian will choose some items for you and notify you when they are available to pick up.

 

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

 

The Giver of Stars is another book about the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky. This book's main character is Alice Van Cleve, an English woman who finds herself transplanted to Kentucky in an unhappy marriage and with a violent father-in-law. Similarly to Cussy Mary, she finds independence in pursuing the life of a Packhorse Librarian.

 

Giver of Stars vs The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

 

There is some controversy around the fact that The Giver of Stars was published so closely following The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek. (Moyes' came out in the fall of 2019, while Richardson's book was published earlier in the spring of the same year.) Several reviewers have also pointed out that in addition to sharing the same obscure theme, there are also similar phrases that appear in both books that seem to be more than a coincidence. There have been a few articles written about the topic, but most come to the same conclusion: you'll have to read them both for yourself and make up your own mind about the controversy.

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What is a book of historical fiction you've read that's sparked your interest in learning more about the facts?