The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
“The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek” by Kim Michele Richardson is the story of Cussy, who lives with her Pa in Troublesome, Kentucky. Pa’s anxious for her to marry, but she has taken a job as a Pack Horse librarian to deliver books for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s WPA program. Her skin is blue, and she’s sure no one will want her. Pa works in the mines to get her out of here, but she likes her freedom and the joy of bringing books to the hill folk who love her visits. She feels necessary.
By 1936 two dozen men have come calling. Her dowry is ten acres to be cleared for farming or timber. Pa wants her to be married safe. He sees her married to Frazier, an older man, who pokes her and beats her until he dies of a heart attack. Pa buries him and takes his daughter and the marrying candle home. She’s inherited an old beaten mule from Frazier and nursed her back to health so they can carry the books to their patrons. She named her Junia. Angelina waits for them and meets Junia, who likes the little girl. Angelina takes Cussy into her oneroom dingy cabin to give a book to her husband, Willie. She sees that his fingers and toenails are blue like hers. Angelina returns a worn book to Cussy, who says she’ll have to repair it herself. The government doesn’t pay for repairs to books donated by PTAs, Boy Scout troops, and women’s clubs. They’ll deduct it from Cussy’s pay. Angelina tells her she’s pregnant scratches the baby’s name on the dirt: Honey. Her husband says it’s a person of color’s name.
Cussy runs into her husband’s cousin Vester Frazier, the Pastor, on her way home. He’s trouble. When he’d baptized the sinners in cold Troublesome Creek, one child fell into a coma, two babies drowned, and another boy became mute. When he tries to grab Cussy, her mule Junia tramples him, and he runs off. Frazier yells “Blue witch” at her. She rides on to Lovett’s Ridge. When he gets too close, Junia bites Jackson, but he seems kind and pours alcohol on the wound. When he peels an apple, Junia snatches it from his hand. He tells Cussy how pretty she is, and she says her other name is bluet. When she rides away, she thinks of Jackson Lovett and wonders about him.
When she gets home, Pa is on his way to a union meeting even though it’s dangerous. After he leaves, she cleans the cabin, then washes the sheets and hangs them to dry, and gets the water for Pa’s bath after he gets home. She looks through the mountain scrapbooks covering every subject from cartoons to soap recipes and poetry.
She sees signs that say No colored and knows they apply to her on her ride. The following week she goes to the schoolhouse and gives the teacher, Winnie, the Love Story magazine before the supervisor can ban it. She tops at Miss Loretta’s, nearly blind, and helps her to bed. Author Richardson brings Troublesome Creek to life, showing how women help people in different ways.
The mining company makes sure the miners shop at the company store and use the credit that keeps them in debt, just as in the folksong. Cussy meets her friend Queenie and learns she’ll be moving to Philadelphia as Book Woman there. She’d applied and been accepted. Cussy will miss her.
Next Cussy meets up with Timmy, whose mom won’t let her come across the creek to their house. Cussy leaves a magazine with recipes and a book for Timmy in a pot with a lid to keep it dry.
Frazier, the Pastor, is on the ground with Pa watching over him when she gets home. The mule has killed him, broke his body, says the doctor. Pa has given the Preacher Foxglove herb to stop the bleeding. Says Doc, two dead Fraziers, reminding them of Cussy’s deceased husband. She swallows her accusations because even a woman raped did not have justice on her side in those days. Doc says they have a problem that needs fixing: he wants to do tests on her, and Pa insists she go once a month for the tests and experiments to keep the Doc on their side.
Cussy is picked up one day in the Doc’s car (a Plymouth) and driven to St. Joseph’s hospital in Lexington, a big city that awes Cussy. The car, too, amazes her. She’s poked and given pi8lls by the nuns at the hospital and released to be driven home by Doc. He plans to “fix” her blue blood and make her skin white. Folks wonder about the Pastor’s disappearance, and Cussy piles more debris on the grave until one day his body is gone. She wonders about this.
Later she sees the Pie Bake Dance in full swing. Some couples dance to the three fiddlers, and the table in the middle of the room is laden with pies and goodies. She thinks she’s being vain and is ashamed of wanting to be white. It isn’t going to change the way people feel toward her. They still call her heathen and disgraceful. The dialect is accurate and easy to understand and adds to the realism of Kentucky life.
When Cussy gets to Angelina’s cabin, she finds Mr. Moffet swinging from a tree branch, dead, and Angelina soaked in bloody sheets in bed, the baby beside her. Angelina wants Cussy to be the baby’s mom. She knows she’s dying and wants the baby called Honey. Cussy is overwhelmed and goes with Honey to Jackson Lovett for help. He promises to bury the two adults and cuts a lock of hair to save for Honey.
Did Jackson court Cussy later and wed her despite Kentucky laws against mixed marriages in those days? Is the blue skin disease factual, and is there a way to change it to white? Find out in this well-researched book on the fiction shelf of your local library.