The sparsely populated eastern Kentucky Appalachian mountains and valleys in 1936 is the setting for this engaging novel by a native Appalachian Kentuckian.
The single dirt-poor daughter of an ailing coal miner suffers from the prevalent discrimination and misogyny of white folk because her rare inherited methemoeglobunemia makes her skin blue. Eking out a living by joining the Pack Horse library program of the Works Progress administration to deliver library services to the colourful backward independent hill people, she meets and befriends a diverse mixture of misfits, delivering library books, magazines and newspapers on her ornery mule Junia.
Encountering lawlessness, corruption, illiteracy, inbreeding, misogyny racism, and starvation was part of the everyday life for the very real Kentucky Pack Horse librarians. But there are also acts of generosity and heroism. The poignant symbolism of the semiliterate starving school boy, Henry, who nevertheless gives Cussy Mary his single Lifesaver candy in gratitude for her delivery of children’s books is very touching. The decision of Cussy Mary to discontinue the new treatment that makes her a beautiful white woman speaks to the importance of acceptance of who one really is, and not yielding to conformity. The abusive lawlessness of the anti union coal company is startling but realistic. The backward starving hill folk who refuse to accept any aid simply because it came from the government via Roosevelt’s WPA program reminded me of modern day Republican states’ refusal of federal aid because it was part of Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
The complex plot unfolds slowly but, for the most part, unpredictably and the first person singular narrative is loaded with southern idioms and figures of speech. There are no loose ends and the reader is left to guess the fate of ‘Cussy Mary’, the narrator, until close to the end.
A couple quibbles. The need for a wedding and a traumatic death to round out the story becomes predicable well before they happen in the last few of the 47 short chapters. And one incongruity: it is said to be pouring rain on a “cloudless day”, probably a computer spellchecker typo not corrected by a human one.
Having visited my daughter who lives and works in eastern Kentucky (at one time in Hazard), I can just begin to understand the uniqueness of the regional culture although it is no longer as backward as it once was.
This is a beautiful well written story. Highly recommended.
Thanks.
Vera and Alana.
The Passionate Reader 