Brown Bag

Mary Greenan will lead a discussion of Kim Michele Richardson's bestselling novel The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to read the book in advance. Ask for a copy at the library’s information desk.

From Library Journal:

Richardson takes readers to 1930s Troublesome Creek, KY, where Cussy Mary Carter works as a Kentucky Pack Horse Librarian. Under Roosevelt's WPA (Works Progress Administration), the  Pack Horse Librarian initiative put unmarried women  to work delivering books to remote locations in an effort to boost both literacy and female employment. Cussy Mary is not only a Pack Horse Librarian, she's a Blue. She's assumed to be the  last of  her kind—a group of  blue-skinned folks regularly shunned, persecuted, and sometimes killed by white locals. Cussy Mary's work to spread literacy through the  hills meets with her family's battles against poverty and racial animus, as a doctor sets out to "cure" her of  her blue skin. Will turning Cussy Mary into a white woman  solve her troubles? VERDICT Based on true stories from different times (the  blue-skinned people of  Kentucky and the  WPA's Pack Horse Librarians), this novel packs a lot of hot topics into one narrative.