Thursday, January 30, 2020

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

In 1936, tucked deep into the woods of Troublesome Creek, KY, lives blue-skinned 19-year-old Cussy Mary Carter, the last living female of the rare Blue People ancestry. The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule Junia to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.  
Can Kim Michele Richardson write better than Cussy Mary can ride a mule?  Let's hear from the erstwhile critics of the LTBC, as gathered this evening around the campfire:

Ken:  I found it interesting from an historical point of view.  I appreciated seeing how it would be living in that time.  B+

Tom:  I thought it was pretty good - as Charlie said, Cussy Mary was a one-dimensional character, just too perfect.  At the end, the author jerked us around a bit:  we finally get to the Jane Austin ending, Cinderella is to be married to the Prince, and then the miner rushes in, it looks like all will be lost, but then he just wants to give the bride away, so again we are all happy, then the sheriff rushes in, again all will be lost - manipulating the reader.  The last 4-5 pages about Jackson Lovett were gratuitously jerking us around.  All in all, a satisfactory book.  B

Karl:  I cringed at the first page and was very pessimistic for the rest of the book. A sock “… rooted to the earth …” and a corpse “… eternally rooted like the black oak to the hard, everlasting Kentucky land …” in two successive paragraphs was too much for me. I feared that the writing for the rest of the book would be as bad.

Happily, it wasn’t. In fact, I thought it quite good. The insertion of dialect was appropriate and did not get in the way of a smoothly told story. Still, for most of the book I kept wondering why I was supposed to be reading it. I understand that the first page was intended to create some suspense and that I was urged to read on to uncover its meaning, but that just didn’t happen. For a long time the book just wandered along detailing the kindness and thoughtfulness of Cussy Mary as she went about her duties in an area of abject poverty and racial bigotry. I kept asking myself, “What’s the point?”

 I admit that I did find her condition, methemoglobinemia, quite fascinating and interrupted my reading of the book to learn more about it. I thought that most of the characters were well painted and that the level of detail was sufficient to communicate an appropriate sense of the time, place, and people. As a recording of the Bookwoman program, the life in rural eastern Kentucky during the 1930’s, the condition of methemoglobinemia, I thought the book was excellent. I learned a lot about things of which I had no prior knowledge. However, as a piece of literature, the lack of an engaging story line bothered me. Consequently, the book was anything but a “page-turner.” It took me a good two weeks to finish it.

I did think that the author painted the characters well, but not consistently well.  It should be more reasonable.  On the whole, I enjoyed the book, but I’m not sure to whom I’d recommend it.  B

Charlie:  It is best to think of this book as an educational piece.  I learned a lot, glad I read it.  B

Ron B:  It held my interest, ending was OK.  I felt the author's writing was best when the vignette was a tragedy.  I didn't know much about these subjects.  I give it an A.  I've since read some "popular" author's books, and find them to be sorely disappointing and not at this level of our book choices.  I found those not to be to my liking.  This was above:  A

Keith:  The Library could not deliver in a process that should be simple.  I was 15th on the list to start with, and never moved up.  Accessibility should be considered when making our book choices.

Bob W:   I was not amused.  One thing that put me off was attempting to write in dialect - the author did not succeed.  I grew up in Virginia and was not impressed.  B-

Jack:  I found it a very engaging story.  I learned a lot about both the Pack Horse Project and the Blue People.  I found the Cussy Mary story was a little too melodramatic at times for me.  From the author's view, a story of poverty and prejudice.  Looking back at how red, brown, black people were treated, not much has changed, This story was engaging enough to warrant a B+

Mike:  This book brought out my inner curmudgeon.  Not a great achievement these days, just that the early pages brought thoughts of: “Dick Jensen is easily our most prolific reader – he reads perhaps tens of books every month – why would he subject us to this one?”

Then I thought back, and said, “Ah, yes – it is about abject poverty and coal miners against management – the life he came from, the life he knew.”  But what about The Camerons (1972, by Robert Crichton)?  There are many books that wouldn’t piss me off like this one, aren’t there?  I hope?


  So then I started thinking:  what is it that upsets me about this book?  I appreciated learning about the two little-known snippets of history.  But this was a painful way to go about it. The best developed character was the mule. C at best.  C for curmudgeon.  

  I present but two (from dozens of) examples of writing that interrupted my reading and destroyed my  enjoyment, i.e., made me yell at the author:  
 Page 189:  “Oh, Doc, you nearly knocked the color off my skin” 
 Page 197: Queenie actually says, speaking of opportunity:  “My sons and their sons will have it, and they won’t be tethered to their color, choked by the leashes of those who would cinch the tightest with the longest of ropes.”   Now, is that a casual conversation Queenie would have with Bluet?
   However, the author enticed me to look up one of her literary references, where Cussy Mary was reading the poem In a Restaurant by Wilfred Wilson Gibson - "I could almost hear the violins playing ..."
      He wears a red rose in his buttonhole,
      A city-clerk on Sunday dining out:
      And as the music surges over the din
      The heady quavering of the violin
      Sings through his blood, and puts old cares to rout,
      And tingles, quickening, through his shrunken soul,

      Till he forgets his ledgers, and the prim
      Black, crabbèd figures, and the qualmy smell
      Of ink and musty leather and leadglaze,
      As, in eternities of Summer days,
      He dives through shivering waves, or rides the swell
      On rose-red seas of melody aswim.


...and from well off the trails of Eastern Kentucky:
Mike: Please give my apologies to the group. I really wanted to have this meeting at my house but I just cannot guarantee how much pain I would have on Thursday evening.

I first read about this book in the New York Times Book Review. Even though the comments in that publication were very favorable I was a bit turned off by the title and the description of the book. After reading two or three other references to the book I ordered it from the library. When the book came my wife was looking for something to read so I gave it to her to read first. After she read it she described it as "exquisite". I read the book and was very impressed so I decided to share it with the group.

In her author's note the author stated: "In writing the novel, my hope was to humanize and bring understanding to the gracious blue-skinned people of Kentucky and to pay tribute to the fearsome Pack Horse librarians--and to write a human story set in a unique landscape." I think she achieved her goal. The book is well-written, full of interesting and often sad characters, and provides a history that is known by few people. I gained an understanding of the people in this poor, rural region of Kentucky that I did not have before I read the book. During the depression my father worked on one of the federal programs--I think the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). They built rock walls and trails in the mountains near where I grew up. I can remember him taking us to look at some of the walls and trails that still existed. Also, you know that he was a coal miner so my family is linked in other ways to this story.

I would give the book a solid A. I will pass it on to my nephew in Utah and encourage him to share it with his cousins.
     Dick 

Review from Bob Simon:
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

I enjoyed the book.  It was well written and held my attention, except during the attempted rape.

I loved the historic context of book riders and found the medical condition that turned her skin blue fascinating.  I thought about how she struggled unsuccessfully to live as a white person and I was really upset that the law and science could not prevent her husband from being convicted of marrying a colored person.

It reminds me of an incident in Fort worth when I was in law school in the late 60’s.  There was a graduate law student visiting a friend in Fort Worth who was from India. We all decided to go to the Cellar downtown, which was a nightclub of sorts. When we got to the door we were stopped and told that we could not enter because our friend who had a masters in International law and was studying for his doctorate in International Law could not enter because he was colored.

I realized then that you do not need to be a negro to be colored. I now think not allowing him to enter may have been in his best interest, although I regret to say that.  Sort of like Tennessee not allowing coloreds to marry whites.  It is just too difficult to deal with the prejudice of white racists.  I am reminded of a quote I heard somewhere, “This is the way it is and we like it this way.”

When we read Born a Crime next month, we will confront the quandary of a person of mixed race who does not fit easily into any broad legally defined category as well as the hatred confronting a person who is not from a tribal group you are culturally associated with.

The moral of this book and Born a Crime for me is that society often criminalizes those who do not fit in to comfortable cultural categories.  We fear and hate, based simply upon the color of one’s skin or the way they speak.

In fact, both books illustrate how people are uncomfortable with people who do not speak in the culturally accepted manner of speech.  The book did a good job portraying that hate in describing the Sheriff who personified that prejudice.


Grade: A-

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