The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek Delivers!

We met in person at the restaurant in IKEA to discuss The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson. We sat in a corner of the room next to some cute colorful children’s furniture. Soon after we arrived, children filled the furniture and filled the air near our table with joyous noises. The ambient noise kept me from hearing some of the discussion and from getting a good recording of it on either of 2 cell phones I brought for the occasion. After about half of the discussion, I moved from a chair where I could spread out to take notes on my laptop to one in the middle of our group, where I was happier and heard more but didn’t bring my computer. Thus, the following is a piecemeal blog post celebrating our lively discussion.

Ken said the Pack Horse Librarians (1935-1943) was one of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects to alleviate poverty during the Great Depression. Mostly women delivered the books, and a few men did, too. People earned money from these government programs and brought it home to their families. Joyce thought the practical materials from the libraries, e.g., pamphlets & magazines, would be useful, and she was surprised at how much interest there was among the Kentuckians in literature. Someone said they also used newspapers for their walls.

Favorite characters: Junia the mule! The school teacher, and Queenie. Cindy noted that no one told Queenie about Library School; she had to find it for herself. Carla noted that Queenie was boasting somewhat about leaving for the library job. As a Black woman, she had seen plenty of prejudice against her, so she deserved the good fortune. And, of course, though she had been prideful and showed her own form of prejudice against Cussy, Cussy was friendly toward her. We touched on whether Cussy was “too nice”. Ken said some characters, such as the Sheriff, were stereotypes. The baby, Honey, was mentioned, as a gift to Cussy.

We talked a little about libraries we remembered from our younger years. Ken - a big Carnegie library in Cleveland; Flo - a bookmobile; Cindy didn’t know of one in Wichita Falls, TX; I began working at my local library when I was 16 and worked there until I left for college.

Together, we put together the words to the chorus of the song “Sixteen Tons.”

We discussed when we each first saw color TV. I still have a picture in my mind of that TV screen when I saw it across the room! (I first saw it at my father’s business partner’s home. We walked in, and there was a football game on. Green field, colorful uniforms, colorful clothing on the spectators. I didn’t mention it at the meeting, because the group changed the subject before I had a chance, but I did use the topic of "first color TV" in a letter I sent to my husband’s ninety-something year-old uncle a few days ago.

We talked a little about why people in Appalachia didn’t leave. They couldn’t without any money, and they didn’t know much about what was out there, even though the country was settled most everywhere.

Cindy mentioned the quote, “The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.” Sorry, I missed exactly what was said in our conversation. I Googled the quote and found that there is no evidence that T.S. Eliot, to whom it is attributed, ever wrote it.

We talked about Cussy’s blue skin, the medical condition that caused it, and the prejudice against her it caused. Marcia noted that when Cussy took the medicine and her skin turned to the color of a white person, people thought it was a “trick.” It was, sort of, but the worst thing about it for our book was that, as Joyce said, the medicine was discovered in the 1960s, whereas this “historical novel” was about a slice of life in the 1930s. Joyce also explained how this rare condition could have become common enough for people to occasionally see it, via the pairing of a white couple and the rare passing on of a recessive gene from each of the parents to a child.

The book we discussed was the first in a group of two. The Bookwoman’s Daughter, by the same author, is equally delightful and troubling. The baby, Honey, (who was gifted to Cussy in the first book) grows up in the same community among prejudice and sexism. I chanced to read this book before I was aware of the first book’s existence, and I found it to be a page-turner, which made me glad when Ken nominated the first book for discussion!

Note: If you have any corrections for this blog post, please let me know!