Fact AND Fiction
FACT–The real horseback librarians
A group of “book women” on horseback in Hindman, Kentucky, 1940. KENTUCKY LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES
They were known as the “book women.” They would saddle up, usually at dawn, to pick their way along snowy hillsides and through muddy creeks with a simple goal: to deliver reading material to Kentucky’s isolated mountain communities.
The Pack Horse Library initiative was part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), created to help lift America out of the Great Depression, during which, by 1933, unemployment had risen to 40 percent in Appalachia. Roving horseback libraries weren’t entirely new to Kentucky, but this initiative was an opportunity to boost both employment and literacy at the same time.
The WPA paid the salaries of the book carriers—almost all the employees were women, making the initiative unusual among WPA programs—but very little else. Counties had to have their own base libraries from which the mounted librarians would travel. Local schools helped cover those costs, and the reading materials—books, magazines, and newspapers—were all donated. In December 1940, a notice in the Mountain Eagle newspaper noted that the Letcher County library “needs donations of books and magazines regardless of how old or worn they may be.”
Old magazines and newspapers were cut and pasted into scrapbooks with particular themes—recipes, for example, or crafts. One such scrapbook, which still is held today at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, New York, contains recipes pasted into a notebook with the following introduction: “Cook books are popular. Anything to do with canning or preserving is welcomed.” Books were repaired in the libraries and, as historian Donald C. Boyd notes, old Christmas cards were circulated to use as bookmarks and prevent damage from dog-eared pages.
The book women rode 100 to 120 miles a week, on their own horses or mules, along designated routes, regardless of the weather. If the destination was too remote even for horses, they dismounted and went on foot. In most cases, they were recruited locally—according to Boyd, “a familiar face to otherwise distrustful mountain folk.”
By the end of 1938, there were 274 librarians riding out across 29 counties. In total, the program employed nearly 1,000 riding librarians. Funding ended in 1943, the same year the WPA was dissolved as unemployment plummeted during wartime. It wasn’t until the following decade that mobile book services in the area resumed, in the form of the bookmobile, which had been steadily increasing in popularityacross the country.
In addition to providing reading materials, the book women served as touchstones for these communities. They tried to fill book requests, sometimes stopped to read to those who couldn’t, and helped nurture local pride. As one recipient said, “Them books you brought us has saved our lives.” In the same year as the call for books, the Mountain Eagle exalted the Letcher County library: “The library belong to our community and to our county, and is here to serve us … It is our duty to visit the library and to help in every way that we can, that we may keep it as an active factor in our community.”
Atlas Obscura has a selection of images of the Kentucky pack horse librarians.
© 2020 Atlas Obscura. All rights reserved.
FICTION–two novels written after extensive research into the real librarians
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele RichardsonThe hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt’s Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome’s got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy’s not only a book woman, however, she’s also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy’s family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she’s going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler.Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman’s belief that books can carry us anywhere—even back home.source: express.co.ukShop Related ProductsThe Peacock Emporium: A Novel$13.48$16.00 (496)
OPINIONS–Two Sandcastle Book Club members give their opinions
Kathy Ladner on The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
This engaging story told the history of the Kentucky outreach book program by following Bluet’s job as she rode her mule Junia, a strong entertaining and delightful character, through the mountains to provide books for her customers in loving a creative ways. Her various displays of humanity made the book engaging, such as how she helped Angeline. In addition, this novel included information on methemoglobinema, a blood disorder caused by the absence of an enzyme that created blue skin as well as the miscegenation laws which did not allow mixed marriages. Al in all, this novel proved how resources like books help empower people and how one woman can make a powerful difference in many lives.
Madeleine Kaye on Giver of Stars
No one would confuse Moyes with Dostoyevsky, but she tells a good story and develops solid, empathetic characters. She raised my awareness of a unique and inspired New Deal program to bring books and reading to the Kentucky back woods in the height of the Great Depression. At the same time, she weaves in the unlikely friendship that develops among the women who work the programs. And she throws in the requisite social issues and romance (I’ll not ruin the surprise). There are no blue people, but I give it two thumbs up as a page-turning, entertaining beach read.
To read the latest about claims that Moyes ‘stole’ Kim’s Michele’s idea and research, go to:
https://newsflash.one/2019/11/09/jojo-moyes-the-giver-of-stars-suffers-blow-as-further…
To listen to an NPR podcast that interviews former librarians and their children, go to:
In response to the Bookwoman story, I must say that I really dislike Km Michele Richardson’s writing style. Her sentences sound like she constructed them in a writing workshop where she was encouraged to do sentence expansion exercises adding as many adjectives and figures of speech as possible.
In addition, I did not like the way she used a medical condition, now completely eradicated, to try to create a situation that she portrayed as being a racist one. I could not see that as being ‘honest’ with the reader. It was almost an insult to those who endure real racism.
Thank you, Frances, for the wonderful information about the Pack Horse Librarians. I read The Giver Of Stars and have recommended for our book club in the fall. Several women have already read it and loved it! It was about something I had never heard of. I think book clubs should entertain and enlighten the members and this book certainly did!
I had never heard of the Pack Horse Librarians either, Cheryl. I, too, enjoyed Giver of Stars. I hope your book club votes to read it.