Doc pronounces Vester dead but warns that people will be suspicious because they are Blues. When Pa finds Vester Frazier in their yard, he shoots and kills him. As Cussy Mary’s relationship with Lovett grows, Pa becomes increasingly involved in the miners’ union, and his involvement worries her it is dangerous to work against the company that oversees the mining in their town. She meets a new patron, Jackson Lovett, and they bond over their shared love of books.Ĭussy Mary continues with her work, going into town to the Library Center, where the White women discriminate against her, but where she has become friends with a Black librarian, Queenie. Shortly after her visit, Preacher Vester Frazier (Charlie’s cousin) assaults Cussy Mary in the woods. She visits her patron, Angeline Moffit, a young woman who is pregnant by her husband, Willie, who has been shot in the foot and is dying. On their wedding night, he beats and rapes her before dying of a heart attack.Ĭussy Marry returns to work after a self-induced abortion.

Eventually, Charlie Frazier does marry Cussy Mary. However, no suitor wants to marry Cussy Mary, despite her generous dowry, because of the color of her skin. She lives alone with her father, who made a promise to her recently deceased mother that he would see her respectably married.

Set in a hilly area of rural Kentucky, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek focuses on Cussy Mary Carter, a 19-year-old librarian with a genetic condition that turns her skin blue.

The book of woman of troublesome creek