The Mountains We Call Home: The Book Woman’s Legacy

It’s 1953 in the mountains of Thousandsticks, KY, as lawmen arrest Cussy and her husband, Jackson. Cussy is sentenced to 18 months in prison for miscegenation: she is a Blue, born with methemoglobinemia that gives her blue skin, and Jackson is white. In prison, guards and inmates recoil from her appearance, despite her explanations of the medical condition. Cussy’s storytelling and experience as a pack-horse librarian eventually win over the warden, who appoints her prison librarian to help raise literacy rates. Though inmates initially avoid the library and Cussy, she adapts, bringing books to the elderly and those on death row, reading aloud, teaching letter writing, and quietly building trust. Her success leads to work assisting the men’s prison library as well. Granted a temporary release to teach literacy in a Black community, Cussy also discovers she is pregnant, placing her at odds with the prison’s mandatory abortion policy. When an accident creates a chance to escape, Cussy must choose between survival and sacrifice.