Candidly Cline

 Candidly Cline by Kathryn Ormsbee, 320 pages.

Cline Alden loves music, just like the other Alden women before her. But these days her mama doesn't seem interested in music, insisting that it won't get Cline anywhere and that she should be practical. So when Cline hears about a young songwriters workshop forty minutes away at the University of Lexington she's sure she has to go, and just as sure her mama won't understand. With some fibbing and some help from her gran she manages to get to the workshop, where she realizes just how much of herself she's been keeping to herself. Which only becomes more obvious when she starts falling for her songwriting partner when she hasn't even told anyone she likes girls yet. 

This book was so extremely wholesome and honest. Despite being a middle grade novel Ormsbee's prose is rich and lush, and Kentucky comes through clear and strong. I also appreciate how focused this book stayed, not going off on the common diversions I was expecting from a coming of age novel and instead staying very focused on it's own themes. It also gave me a good list of classic country music to look into. Overall, I found this novel so emotionally fulfilling and smart, and I would definitely recommend it to others, middle schoolers or adults.

Oh My Stars

Oh My Stars by Lorna Landvik (2005) 389 pages

In Depression-era rural Kentucky, Violet Mathers's mother deserts her and her father when Violet is just six. Violet's father doesn't really know any emotions but anger, and thus Violet lives a dreary life, unable to find solace in others, who consider her to be ugly. At age sixteen, she finds a job at a thread factory, but a horrible accident while she is trying to fix a jammed machine causes her to lose a large part of an arm. Her anger at the world is intense, and I found it hard to continue reading in the early going. Knowing that author Lorna Landvik has never disappointed me yet, I soldiered on, as Violet takes her savings and heads to San Francisco, intending to jump off the Golden Gate bridge. On the way, the bus she's on hits a tree in a rainstorm and the passengers are brought to the small town of Pearl, North Dakota. In Pearl, Violet meets a variety of people; her life changes dramatically because of some musicians she meets. Race relations have an important role in the story.

The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson  308 pp.

During the Great Depression the Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project was created to bring books to the poor mountain people of the state. In this novel Cussy Mary Carter is one of a group of women who rode from shack to shack delivering books, magazines, newspapers, and human contact. Cussy is also one of the "Blue People" of Kentucky, suffering from the recessive gene disorder methemoglobinemia. Because of their skin color the "Blues" were discriminated against and viewed with suspicion the same as the African-Americans in the region. Cussy and her father live a life of poverty even though he works hard as a coal miner. Cussy is proud of her work and does her best for the people she serves often going above and beyond her duties by bringing food to the starving, medical aid to the ill, and providing companionship to the lonely in spite of her personal hardships. It's a nice story of some little known topics with a little romance on the side. Incidentally the area around Troublesome Creek is where many of the real "Blue People" lived.

Ultima Thule

Ultima Thule by Davis McCombs, 52 pages

In this slim volume, McCombs offers poems focusing on the cave country of Kentucky, where McCombs was, at the time these were written, a park ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park. The poems touch on the majesty, mystery, and history of this, the largest cave system in the world, offering up reflections and meditations on everything from the people who lived in and above the caves in the past to the forces of nature that created them and the creatures that live there today. I particularly enjoyed the first third of the book, which comprises poems told from the point of view of Stephen Bishop, a slave who discovered several of Mammoth Cave's passages and led tours through them in the 1800s. I'm not usually a fan of poetry, but I very much enjoyed this evocative collection.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, 257 pages.

Vance's paean to his family and the land they came from. Vance grew up in Jackson, Kentucky, and in Ohio, bouncing around between living with his mother and her series of boyfriends, and staying with, or at least seeking shelter with, his Mamaw and Papaw. Colorful and honest, it is a good story. Many of my coworkers have read and commented on this book, and it has received a lot of attention elsewhere. I liked it, thought it was excellent in parts, and I will just let what others have said about it stand in for my comments. The audio was capably narrated by the author.