58 pages • 1 hour read
Kim Michele RichardsonThe Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 25-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
Happy that Pa is alive, Cussy Mary realizes the danger she put Queenie in by asking her to act as a messenger. She remembers how the Company ransacked the house and eventually evicted a miner’s wife who passed letters during a miners’ strike. She also thinks of a lawyer in the next county who worked for the miners and whose car was bombed. Pa’s message is coded but explains that he is busy with mine meetings and will be home in two nights. Cussy Mary worries for him.
On the trail home, Cussy Mary sees a rattlesnake, and Junia won’t circle around it, leading Cussy Mary to fall and land next to the snake. Before it can bite her, there is an explosion. Angeline approaches with a shotgun, saying she’s shot her dinner. Reloading quickly, she shoots a nest of snakes to the side; they are the reason Junia wouldn’t go around the original snake. Angeline explains that she and her husband have food now that she has bullets. Cussy Mary is envious, wanting to hunt and fish, too, like when she was little. Angeline tells her that Willie is getting better, thanks to Cussy Mary’s medicines, and kisses her hand. Cussy Mary tells her she shouldn’t; what if Willie sees? Angeline protests that Willie wouldn’t be here without Cussy Mary.
Chapter 26 Summary
At home, Cussy Mary cooks nettles and tries to read a book but is jumpy. She rides Junia toward Troublesome, deliberately avoiding the Company store. She encounters the Pie Bake dance instead. People are all dressed up, dancing and eating from the wide selection of pies the women have brought. Cussy Mary imagines herself there and laughs for the first time since her mother died. Dancing by herself outside, Cussy Mary is surprised by a man, Allen Thompson, who sneaks up behind her and touches her inappropriately. Junia strains to help her but can’t get free as Cussy Mary struggles. The sheriff comes out and tells Thompson to get away. As Thompson pulls back, he falls against Cussy Mary. For the first time, he sees that she’s blue and calls her a freak. The sheriff asks Cussy Mary what she’s doing in town, and she says she just wanted to see the Pie Bake. He tells her that there’s a “No Coloreds” sign at the dance, and she apologies. He asks her about Pastor Vester, but she says she never sees “a living soul” on her route (177).
Chapter 27 Summary
Back at home, Cussy Mary swears to herself not to tell Pa what happened. She cleans the house, daydreaming about dancing. She reads an article about how to curl her hair and tries to do so with rags. However, she feels silly and undoes it.
At dawn, Pa comes in with rabbits and a bobcat he’s shot. He says that Doc is coming in two weeks. She wants to talk about how dangerous his union work is, and they argue. He says that he has to do it, and she wonders if he has to do it because he’s blue. He fights back, saying that he has to do it because he’s a miner: “It’s because I’m a Kentucky miner, and a damn good one!” (181).
When Doc comes, he brings the latest newspaper with him. Cussy Mary is too proud to ask about food and too afraid to ask about the tests, so they talk about horse farms in the car instead. At the hospital, Cussy Mary agrees to the tests but won’t do them if the nuns are involved. Doc agrees. She also tells him that she’ll need food, and he says he has a whole carton in the car. This time, Doc and Dr. Mills ask Cussy Mary many questions about her background, with a woman in the corner taking notes. They ask her about her family history and its illnesses. They go over her charts and X-rays. Mills is surprised when she offers to write out her family tree, until Doc explains that she is a librarian. Later, Cussy Mary is offended when Dr. Mills sits her down for an eye test, which she thinks is a test of literacy (which she has already proven).
Doc and Mills discuss her color in relationship to a new paper about a hereditary blood disorder. Mills wants to admit her for study, but Cussy Mary refuses, and Doc is on her side. Mills says he doesn’t need her consent to do it, but Doc fights with him out in the hall. When they come back, Doc says they will just take another blood sample to see if she is lacking the same enzyme identified in the study. Cussy Mary worries she will faint at the injection but decides it is worth proceeding if it could help Pa become white.
Chapter 28 Summary
In return for the medical tests, Doc gives Cussy Mary a lot of food. On Sunday, she brings it to the children. She ties it in a sack on a beam at the schoolhouse, thinking that all the tests were worth it. That Wednesday, Doc comes over and tells her she has methemoglobinemia, a blood disorder related to her genes; her blood is not sufficiently oxygenated. He gives her a possible antidote, methylene blue. Shortly afterwards, Cussy Mary’s skin turns white. She feels the same but looks different, and Doc calls her pretty. However, she has a stomachache and vomits. The medicine also gives her a headache.
Over the course of several days, Cussy Mary’s urine turns blue and her skin goes back to blue, too. She will need to take the antidote regularly. Doc offers Pa tablets of the medicine, too, but Pa protests that the only thing he needs fixed is the disease he got working in the mines. Cussy Mary tries to cajole him into taking it, taking a pill in front of him. However, she gets sick again. Pa thinks these effects aren’t worth the temporary effects of the pill. Doc explains that she can stop taking them at any time. However, Cussy Mary doesn’t want to give up her new color. Pa disapproves as she admires herself in the mirror.
Chapter 29 Summary
Queenie comes by Cussy Mary’s house after Doc leaves. Cussy Mary explains the treatment to her, and Queenie tells her how pretty she is. She suggests that the two of them go to town to show off her new color. Cussy Mary begins to get Queenie’s dictionary for her, but Queenie tells her to keep it; she’ll have plenty at her new job. The women plan to write and visit. On the ride into town, Cussy Mary begins to feel sick to her stomach. Queenie offers a sandwich, which Cussy Mary doesn’t want to take, but Queenie eventually convinces her to. She feels better after eating it. Queenie suggests that Cussy Mary could now go to the Independence Day parade if she wanted to and discusses her own plans to get a librarian degree. Cussy Mary starts imagining possibilities for her own future.
At the Center, Harriett and Eula think Cussy Mary is sick because of her color, and Harriett tries to get Eula to fire her. However, Doc approaches and explains what happened. Harriett is so upset and jealous that she cries. Queenie gets her final pay and says goodbye to Cussy Mary.
Chapters 25-29 Analysis
In this section, the key event is when Cussy Mary’s skin turns white. However, this is still not the climax of the book. Cussy Mary is fighting against forces of prejudice and ignorance that surround her. She does not defeat them by becoming like everybody else. Instead, becoming like everybody else makes her feel physically ill, a metaphor for the quashed independence within her that is still yearning to rise up. When her skin turns white, people around her who liked her and treated her well still like her and treat her well, as Queenie does. However, people who disliked her and treated her badly still dislike her and treat her badly, as the women at the library do. The problem Cussy Mary faced was never her skin color. Instead, it was the attitudes and misconceptions those around her had about her skin color.
It was certainly dangerous in the community for Cussy Mary when she was blue. She is, in fact, assaulted again in this section while her skin is still blue, outside of the Pie Bake when Allen Thompson attacks her. Although he does not realize she is blue until later, she is only outside, away from the others, because of this fact and so is more vulnerable to assault. While the sheriff does help remove Thompson, the immediate physical threat, he nevertheless reinforces the prejudice within the community by pointing the “No Coloreds” sign out to Cussy Mary. This action further reinforces the theme that community members may distrust authority figures for good reason; here, even the lawman is not fair and acts discriminatorily.
Nevertheless, Cussy Mary begins to reap benefits for her care for her community of library patrons. To this point, she has been shown primarily as a giver within the community, bringing books and helping those on her route. She even decides to undertake the painful tests Doc subjects her to in order to get food and medicine for those in this community. However, in this section, Cussy Mary’s community begins to show how much they appreciate her in the tangible help they give her. Angeline shoots a rattlesnake and its nest along her path, while Queenie gives her a sandwich when she is feeling ill. The people Cussy Mary knows and cares for act in a mutually beneficial way. In a sense, Pa’s union mirrors these dynamics. Pa says he is part of the union because he’s a miner, not because he’s a blue. Similarly, Cussy Mary helps her readers (and they help her) because they all love to read, not because they are all the same color.
