Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - 23
A
By JOAN VANNORSDALL
few months back, I came across a novel by Kentucky
writer Kim Michele Richardson, "The Book Woman
of Troublesome Creek." Compulsively readable, Richardson's novel tells the story of Cussy Carter, the last
of the "Kentucky Blue" people, who takes a job with
the Depression-era WPA Pack Horse Library project to
deliver books into the remote mountains of eastern
Kentucky.
I love the mountains; I love books. I love horses;
I love brave women. So how come I'd never heard of
this steep-trail horseback library project, launched by
Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the depths of the Depression? A project that, from its inception in 1935 to
its end in 1943, reached 1.5 million Kentuckians and
enabled nearly 1,000 women to support themselves
and their families in 48 Kentucky counties? That in
1956 inspired Kentucky Congressman Carl D. Perkins
(who'd benefitted from the Pack Horse Library program as a teacher in Knott County) to sponsor the
Library Services Act, which provided the first federal
appropriations for library service.
I went in search of the story. What I learned taught
me a lot about the power of words in hard times, and
the courage of those who traveled to shared them.
By 1933, unemployment in Appalachia had risen to
40%. Hundreds of coal mines had been closed in
response to the shutdown of factories nationwide;
thousands of miners were out of work. A few years
into the Great Depression, reporter Lorena Hickock
traveled to Appalachia and witnessed infant starvation, rampant pellagra and a severe lack of sanitation.
Poor rocky soil made growing food difficult. Desperate times in the mountains.
KENTUCKY DEPT. FOR
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019
23
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - Intro
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - 3
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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - Cover4
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