I had never heard of Kim Michele Richardson. Nor would I likely have come across her novel ‘The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek’ had it not been the novel chosen for my local reading group this month. The title is intriguing, and I had only glanced briefly at the blurb when I acquired the book a few months ago. So I had no idea what to expect when I picked it up to read a few days ago.
It turns out to be a historical novel, very much based on reality, set in a mountainous region of Kentucky in 1936. ‘Book women’ were essentially library assistants, taking bags of books and magazines to remote homes - often travelling many miles every day - so that children and adults could have something to read.
I have to say, I didn’t like the first few chapters at all. There’s a prologue, told in the third person, involving a young book woman and a mule, stopping short when they see a body hanging from a tree. Not the pleasantest introduction to a story.
In the first chapter, told in the first person from the point of view of a book woman called Cussy Mary, we meet this young woman with her coal miner father. He is determined to find a husband for her - and the custom is that he invites a potential suitor to meet her outside in the evening, while a candle burns. We quickly learn that Cussy Mary’s skin is, unusually, blue.
This is not science fiction or fantasy - it was a real condition caused by a rare genetic defect which was apparently not uncommon in this region in the first half of the 20th century. It was passed on fairly often as there was a great deal of inter-marrying between close relatives. That was partly due to there being very few people around, and partly because the blue-skinned folk were shunned by the whites, almost more so than black people.
So Cussy Mary, despite her high level of literacy and responsible job, experiences racial discrimination to an often shocking degree. And in the second chapter, when a suitor finally agrees to marry her, despite her protests, she is raped and several beaten. It’s a very unpleasant start to the novel and I began to wonder if I was going to manage to finish it.
However I kept going, and I’m so glad I did. While there’s some tension and more shocking violence in places, it’s a very readable and often moving book. I liked Cussy Mary so much - she’s independent, and caring, and extremely hard-working. She loves her father although he’s clearly ill after his life working the mines - he is weak, and coughs a lot, and he wants a husband for her so that there’s someone to look after her when she’s gone. He’s a kind person, and comes to her rescue more than once. But it’s made very clear that he had to be careful - he cannot take revenge, or even say something bad against a white person or he will suffer from it.
The bulk of the book describes Cussy Mary’s visits to mountain people, some of whom don’t want her to go near them. But others welcome her, encourage her and clearly don’t have any problem with the fact that her appearance is unusual.
There’s some medical information - another unpleasant scene involves the local doctor taking Cussy Mary for some tests, subjecting her to all kinds of indignities and pain in the hope of discovering what causes the blue skin, and whether there’s a ‘cure’. And there are some telling sections, when a temporary ‘cure’ is discovered: those who were already prejudiced still refuse to accept her, and those who already accepted her don’t understand why she would want to change to become white.
So the book is educational, in that I had never before heard of this health condition, or blue-skinned people. Nor did I have any idea that there was such immense poverty and tragedy less than 100 years ago in the United States. It’s thought-provoking,too, in that it’s very much about racism, and what it means to someone who is a victim of prejudice. It’s also, of course, about the importance of reading and literature, even in societies where food is scarce and medical knowledge severely limited.
I found it quite page-turning and despite the dialect, in which most people speak, it was a fairly quick and easy read. It’s a good story, well told, with a hopeful epilogue four years after a decidedly unpleasant ending. I doubt if I’ll read this book again, but I would certainly recommend this to anyone interested in lesser-known US history, or who wants a good historical novel based firmly in reality.
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