Engaging story. Really love the landscape/setting descriptions. ( )

I read, and loved, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. Since this book is a sequel to that one, I thought I would love it too. However, I didn't find it an entirely successful follow-up to the first book.

Honey Lovett is, like her mother Cussie, a Blue Fugate, people who have a blue tinge to all or part of their skin due to a rare condition called methemoglobinemia. Her mother rose above her condition, which people in the hill country of Kentucky, view as the same as someone with African-American inheritance. She became a much-loved pack-horse librarian bringing books and other reading material to people dwelling in the remote hollers. Honey is sixteen years old when her parents are imprisoned for violating the state's miscegenation laws. At sixteen Honey isn't deemed old enough to live on her own. An officious social worker wants to take her off to House of Reform which houses orphans in conditions as bad as, or possibly even worse, than a prison. Hoping to avoid this fate for their daughter, Honey's parents arrange for an old family friend in Troublesome Creek to act as her guardian. Honey moves in with Retta, helps her as Retta is quite elderly, and also gets a job as a pack-horse librarian for the Troublesome Creek Library. She meets the new (female) fire watcher who becomes a best friend for Honey. Other people in the area also have an eye out for her well-being but this all seems to come to naught when Retta dies. Her ne'er-do-well nephew sells the house and furnishings in order to pay off debts and have more drinking money. It looks like Honey might end up in the House of Reform. She reads an old newspaper article about a minor obtaining a writ of emancipation so that he could live on his own. She consults the town lawyer who agrees to represent her in this claim. Of course, this isn't a straight-forward deal. The afore-mentioned social worker has teamed up with the sherriff who has a grudge against Honey and they will do their best to turn the town and the judge against Honey.

Cussie and Honey aren't the only women in the book who have to overcome adversity and fight for their rights. It seems like every female character has some battle to face and I felt like there was a little too much going on. I wanted the focus to be on Honey but I kept being distracted by the woman whose miner husband was hitting her or by the female fire-watcher whose fire tower was damaged and set on fire. Lots to think about but maybe just a little too much. ( )

This was a great follow up to her "Troublesome Creek" novel, yet written in a way that you could enjoy Honey's story without reading the previous book.
It was an insightful story about not only Honey's fight for freedom--for both her and her parents--but also giving us a glimpse into women working in difficult jobs and facing backlash from the men and society who feel they're stealing jobs meant for men only. The story reveals the harsh realities of life in coal country, where hard-working people barely scrape by, and where "blues" are not accepted, and women are meant to do what they're told without thinking for themselves.
Such a well-written book, and one which inspired me to add "Troublesome Creek" back in my tbr (again) stack. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of this wonderful historical fiction story. ( )

It's kind of nice and comforting to return to the same location. I love to return to the same places while travelling and I think I also love to come back to the same worlds while reading. This book is a sequel and a stand-alone. If the The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek was about Cussy and ended in 1936, then The Book Woman's Daughter is the story of her adopted daughter Honey and is set in 1953. Saying that, I think one could still benefit from reading them in order. As I had read The Book Woman, I already knew many things and this was less of an eye-opener for me, though the author introduced many new interesting facts from her home state of Kentucky. There are women coal-miners, fire-finders, frontier nurses, not only pack-horse librarians. The patriarchy is terrible, but at the end the women, books and a rooster prevail. This is so much better written than Lessons in Chemistry.

Oh, and I loved the Swedish speaking Doc's wife Millie! I was happy to understand her but still I was impressed by her persistence to continue talking Swedish to everybody (had taught her husband), though she was reading books in English, apparently. And what a cook she was! I love potato pancakes, it's a very Latvian dish, but I have never eaten raggmunk in Sweden. ( )

This is a sequel to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, which I read last month. Although it's preferable to have read that book first, it's not necessary - this book can stand alone.

Still set in eastern Kentucky, the events in this book take place in 1953, almost seventeen years after those in the first book. Sixteen-year-old Honey Mary-Angeline Lovett is the adopted daughter of "Book Woman" Cussy Mary Carter and her husband Jackson Lovett. Like her adoptive mother, Honey has a genetic form of methemoglobinemia, having inherited recessive genes from her birth parents. Her case is milder, as her hands and feet only turn blue when she is agitated or upset, so Honey typically wears gloves everywhere.

Cussy was entirely blue, and considered "colored" in that era, thus hers and (white) Jackson's marriage was a violation of the state's anti-miscegenation law. After successfully hiding for many years, away from their home in Troublesome Creek but still in Kentucky, they are arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. Honey manages to escape on Cussy's old mule Junia back to Troublesome Creek, to avoid being sent to the "house of reform" and hard labor until she turns 21.

But Honey has a lot of people helping her, including her own court-appointed lawyer, who actually fights for her. Her elderly former babysitter is appointed her guardian, but after that woman's death, Honey decides to seek emancipation. To be successful, she needs to be able to support herself - she needs a job.

Although the Pack Horse Library Project had ended in 1943, author Kim Michele Richardson, a native Kentuckian, has a form of it continuing, and Honey is able to follow in her mother's footsteps as a newly hired rural outreach librarian, once again riding Junia to deliver books to a variety of patrons.

Some of these, like moonshiner Devil John Smith and his family, are former patrons of her mother's. Others are new - like Pearl, a 19-year-old single fire tower lookout who becomes Honey's best friend; Bonnie, the young widowed mother who took over her dead husband's coal-mining job; and Amara with the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS).

There are more villains in this book (mostly men), and more situations that will be triggering for some readers. But the descriptions of people and places in Kentucky are evocative, and make me eager to visit this part of the state on an upcoming road trip.

The book ends with a lengthy author's note about some of the real history in the novel; period images of Pack Horse librarians (and some of the scrapbooks they made, although those images should have been much larger to see the details), FNS nurses, and female coal miners and fire tower lookouts; and some excellent reading group discussion questions. ( )