This book received a lot of publicity, and I think I had it built up in my head more than was completely realistic. There’s a lot going on in this book, and I think it just got a bit bogged down.
Cussy Mary Carter, age 19, lives alone with her father in Depression-era Kentucky, following the earlier death of her mother. While her father is a coal miner, she works as a Pack Horse Librarian, riding her mule over dangerous territory to deliver reading material to people in her community who are too poor and too far away to access it themselves. Even with her blue-tinged skin – she is a member of the Fugate family of Kentucky, a family with a genetic trait that causes their skin to appear blue – most of the people on her route love and appreciate her for bringing them something to read every week (and a bit of company, since everyone is isolated.) But there are people who would like to see her relieved of her post because of her skin color – and many of them will stop at nothing to harm her.
I really like the idea of this book. It was interesting to read more about the Appalachian Pack Horse Librarian program, and it just made me realize how much we take for granted being able to read anytime we want. It was also interesting to learn about the Fugate family, and the medical history of that. (I poked around a bit online to educate myself beyond this book.) And I thought that Cussy Mary was a really strong character who was willing to fight back or bend the rules when she could to help the people on her delivery route.
However, I think the author tried to fit too much in – the fight to unionize the coal mines, the bigotry from Cussy Mary’s library supervisor, the marriage subplot paired with a very violent marital rape scene, the stalking subplot, the medical experimentation subplot, the love interest thrown in toward the end. For a book that’s only about 300 pages long, it was overwhelming. Unfortunately, the author had to skim over most of these subplots. I wish they had been teased out a bit more.
This was definitely a book I’d recommend if you want to start learning about Appalachian history and the Great Depression, but I just wish it was more focused.