The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (2019)

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a 2019 novel by Kim Michele Richardson. The story is a fictionalized account of real subjects in the history of eastern Kentucky. Cussy Mary is a "Book Woman" — one of the Packhorse Librarians who delivered books to remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains during the Great Depression, from 1935 to 1943, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) program. Cussy Mary is also a "Blue" — the last of a line of blue-skinned people, whose skin appears the unusual shade due to a rare genetic disorder. As a Book Woman, Cussy Mary is highly regarded, but as a Blue, she is feared and reviled, and experiences racism, discrimination, and violence.

Plot summary

In 1936 eastern Kentucky, 19-year-old Cussy Mary Carter works for the New Deal–funded Pack Horse Library Project, delivering reading material to the remote hill people of the Appalachian Mountains. Cussy Mary, sometimes known as Bluet, lives with her coal-miner and labor-organizing father, and feels her work as a librarian honors her long-dead mother, who loved books. The Carters are the last of the Blue People of Kentucky, considered to be "colored" by the segregationist white community. Her "Pa", Elijah, slowly dying from lung disease from working in the mines, is determined to marry his daughter off, at any cost, in order to ensure her future security. But Cussy Mary loves her independence, her calling, and the joy she helps bring people with books, and would not be able to continue as a married woman. While the people of the small nearby town that headquarters the library treat her badly as a Blue, at least some of her patrons love and respect her.

To Cussy Mary's relief, none of her potential suitors are willing to marry a Blue. But when Elijah offers land as a dowry, the much-older Charlie Frazier agrees to the union. He rapes and severely beats Cussy Mary on the night of their hasty and secretive wedding, but then collapses and dies of an apparent heart attack. Cussy Mary is relieved to be free of the burden of wedlock to this distasteful man, returns home to her "holler", and rededicates herself to her work. A new patron on her route, Jackson Lovett, piques her romantic and intellectual interest, but she also soon realizes that a relative of Charlie's, an evangelical preacher named Vester Frazier, is stalking her as she traverses her remote trails, and means her harm. One night Vester tries sneak up on her cabin, and Pa is forced to kill him. Pa knows that Blues can be hung for less than a white man's death in self defense, and that two dead Fraziers — a large area clan — are too much to get away with. They turn to Doc, a local physician who has long been eager to test and study the Blues, and he helps the Carters steer clear of suspicion in return for access to Cussy Mary. He takes her to a hospital in Lexington for tests, where she is poorly treated, humiliated, and physically invaded, but he basically means well and also provides Cussy Mary with food, which she shares with the starving school children on her route, many of whom suffer from pellagra and are facing death.

The doctor's medical tests lead to the discovery that Cussy Mary and her father have methemoglobinemia, a rare genetic blood disorder that results in unoxygenated blood, causing the blue appearance of their skin. Pa is uninterested in a "cure", but Cussy Mary takes Doc's pills of methylene blue, which turns her skin white. However, the treatment is accompanied by side-effects of headaches and vomiting, and is very short-term. Cussy Mary revels in experiencing herself as white, and "normal", for a while, but soon realizes that the townsfolk still do not accept her. Moreover, they are convinced that her change in appearance is a sign of disease that they might catch. When she tries to join a sewing circle, now that she is "white", she is summarily rejected. She stops the treatment.

Everything changes for Cussy Mary one day upon arriving at the Moffit cabin. Young and pregnant Angeline Moffit is one of the only people who unreservedly love Cussy Mary, and touch her — for example, holding her hand. But her husband Willie refuses any contact with Cussy Mary, even eye contact. When Willie was wounded, he refused to accept medical care from her. On this day, Cussy Mary finds a man hanging from a tree, with a blue infant crying below. She realizes the man is Willie, who has appeared Blue in death. She rushes inside, and finds Angeline bleeding profusely, having given a very difficult birth. Cussy Mary realizes that Angeline and her husband were also Blue descendants, and their baby, Honey, inherited the condition. As Angeline lies dying, Cussy Mary promises to adopt the child, and pretend she was the result of her short-lived marriage.

Shortly thereafter, Pa dies just as the mine faces closing, and Jackson ties his life to Cussy Mary's — though they are forced to pay a heavy price as Cussy Mary's detractors invoke anti-miscegenation laws to thwart their happiness.