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What Members Thought
Loved it! I has no idea about the "blue people" of Kentucky which was really interesting but I also feel the novel shines some great light on racism and white privilege. Awesome read.
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In the 1930s blue-skinned Cussy Mary Carter would pack saddle bags of books on her mule, and ride up into the hills of Kentucky delivering reading materials to the hill people. She was a part of the Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and touched the lives of her lonely customers. Cussy lived with her father, a coal miner, in extreme poverty as did her customers. Because of her blue-hued skin, which was due to a genetic defect, folks classified her as "colored" with all the racial exclusions.
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This book starts with protagonist Cussy Mary being brutalized by her new husband and just keeps on going in that vein. It seems like every other page someone was attacking her and assaulting her. When Cussy was not the target then other people were being attacked and assaulted. When no current person was being targeted, the reader gets to hear instead about those who were historically attacked and assaulted. And in the small places between all of that violence, there were people making snide, ig
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Cussy Mary Carter was a mix of knowledge and naivete. She worked as a pack horse librarian in Kentucky and that part of the story was fascinating, but her personal life was a mess. She was considered "colored" by people in her town because she was blue and faced discrimination of the worst kind. To me though, the ending and love interest felt too fast and rushed, so that is why I rated this one only 4 stars.
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Overall I liked it but it was just slow. It was one of those books that was more a collection of vignettes and not an overarching plot, and I think this contributed to the pace. I definitely liked the second half of the book more when we start following up on all the threads started in the first half. Cussy Mary was a great character and the first few chapters were really intriguing, just wish the rest of the book had kept up that pace. I did like reading about a fully-realised disabled characte
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I listened to this courtesy of Audible. Katie Schorr was an excellent narrator and this was a fabulous book. It pulled Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project and the plight of the Kentucky blue-skinned people together making it educational as well as a good read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who hasn't read it.
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Jul 15, 2019
Arielle Vanessa
marked it as to-read
Jul 21, 2019
Rae ❤ツ
marked it as to-read
Nov 03, 2019
Chelsey
marked it as to-read
Nov 10, 2020
Alyssa
marked it as to-read
Oct 30, 2021
Cecile Grudzinski
rated it
it was amazing
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review of another edition
Shelves:
historical-fiction
Sep 01, 2022
Michelle Wood Kindell
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
23-24-bookclub-done,
2022-reading-done
