by Lynn Austin
Freddy stared at me for a long moment. “What happened to you down in Kentucky? You’ve changed, Allie. You were always the cautious one.”
“I’m all finished being cautious. You would never believe all of the shocking things I’ve done these past few months.”
“Like what?” She looked bemused, as if she didn’t believe me.
“I broke into a mining office and got caught in the act by the sheriff. I explored a deserted coal mine in the pitch-dark because we couldn’t light a lamp or the coal gas might explode. I helped stage a man’s funeral when he wasn’t really dead and then stood in front of him to shield him when the shooter tried to kill him a second time.”
“You’re making this up.”
“No. I’m not. I learned how to make tonics and elixirs to heal people. I learned how to ride a horse named Belle, and I rode her up into the woods, all alone, to deliver books to people who lived way back in the hills.”
“Is this the plot of a book you read?”
“No, Freddy, it’s not! It all really happened—and more. I figured out where a lost treasure was buried, and the whole town came together to help me dig it up. And I fell in love with a handsome musician for a while, and even though it couldn’t last, it was fun. Fun! Don’t hold back with Gordon for one more day. Let yourself fall in love with him, and even if it doesn’t work out, it isn’t the end of the world—it’s only the beginning.”
“If all of this is really true, you should write a book about your adventures.”
“No one would believe it,” I laughed.
The front doorbell rang. Freddy glanced up at the clock on the kitchen wall. “That’s probably Gordon now.”
I scrambled to my feet. “Then I’m going out the back door, not because I don’t want to see him but because you need to be alone with him.”
“You’ve lost your mind, Allie.”
“On the contrary—I’ve finally found it.”
The Depression hadn’t eased much while I was away, and hoboes still came to our back door begging for an odd job to do in return for a meal. I viewed them differently now. I surprised my mother by offering to make soup and homemade bread to serve them. I shocked my father by going to Floptown with him to help the poor. And one afternoon as Mother was leaving to visit Aunt Lydia, I asked to go with her.
The maid answered the door and led us into Aunt Lydia’s morning room. “You look so different, Alice,” Aunt Lydia said the moment she saw me. “Why, you’re positively radiant! You must have had an adventure.”
“I did, Aunt Lydia. In fact, I had several.”
“Sit down, my dear, and tell me all about them.” She reached for my hand and made me sit on the antique settee beside her. I was happy to see that the water cure hadn’t changed my exotic aunt into a replica of my mother. She still carried her crystal tumbler of amber liquid. And the stuffed moose head on the wall still wore a babushka on its head.
“You know, dear, when Cecil and I came back for you, he wasn’t convinced that we should leave you there with that wizened old woman. But I told him, ‘Oh, why not! Let the poor girl live a little!’ I just knew you must be having an adventure.”
“I’m so glad you did.” I leaned back on the sofa beside my aunt and told her stories that I hadn’t even shared with my parents yet. When I got to the part about the wildcat, Mother's face turned pale.
“Alice Grace Ripley! You should have come home immediately if you were in danger!”
“Nonsense,” Aunt Lydia said. “A little danger makes life fun. Tell me, Alice, did you fall in love?”
“I did, for a little while. With a handsome fiddle player who made music like an angel.” I leaned close and added in a whisper that my mother couldn’t hear, “He kissed like an angel, too.”
“Oh, how delicious! Love is the spice of life!” Aunt Lydia picked up her glass and took a long drink before setting it down again. “Did it end in heartache, dear?”
“Well, yes . . . but it was the good kind of heartache, Aunt Lydia. The kind where you’ll always think fondly of each other, even though you know your love could never be.”
My aunt squealed with delight. “Ooh, I just love stories that end that way! Those happy, sappy endings in romance novels aren’t realistic at all. But if you can gaze up at the stars at night and think fondly of your lost love, then it’s worth falling in love and losing him.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
Mother looked from one of us to the other, bewildered, as if she was watching a tennis match and had lost track of the score.
“Each time you fall in love, dear, it will be even more exquisite than the last time.”
“In that case, I’m looking forward to it.”
I thought of the people I’d met in Acorn every single day. Summer had arrived, and the one-room school on Wonderland Creek would be closed until fall, but I wanted to make good on my promise to send textbooks to them. I made an appointment with the school superintendent, and when I explained the situation in Kentucky, he agreed to donate his used books. Father let me speak to some of the groups at church about donating books, too. “I wish you could see how much these people appreciate books,” I told them. “How happy a simple story makes a child who has nothing.”
Speaking of church, it seemed like a very different place to me now. I no longer thought of my attendance as an obligation or of the Sunday service as just a nice, stately ritual. Church was a place to be with other people who also wanted to do God’s work. It was a place to hear from God about what He wanted from me. I’m still waiting to find out all the details, but at least I’m listening now.
When I went to the library to ask Mrs. Beasley about starting another book drive, everyone seemed happy to see me. “We’ve missed you, Miss Ripley. We all wondered what happened to you until someone from your father’s church explained how you’ve been helping out down in Kentucky.”
“I’ve missed you, too. In fact, I’d like to come in and volunteer, if I may. I would like to start a story hour and read to the children once a week the way I read to the children in Kentucky. I’m sure they’ll need something to keep them occupied this summer.”
Mrs. Beasley agreed, and before I left that day, she pulled me aside to whisper confidentially. “The part-time clerk is leaving to get married this fall. Would you like to come back to work? It’s only part time—”
“Yes!” I shouted, before remembering to use my library voice. “I would love to,” I whispered.
Several months after I returned home, a package arrived in the mail from New York City. I ripped it open and found a preview copy of Mack’s novel. The dedication read, “To Miss Lillie—my mentor, mother, and friend.”
I sat down on our living room sofa and started reading immediately. I continued reading, too, barely stopping to eat, and sleeping only when my eyes would no longer focus. Mack was a fine writer and had penned a compelling, edge-of-your-seat story. One of the characters—a naïve young woman with a tendency toward melodrama—sounded a lot like me. I didn’t mind. Mack treated her with fondness in the novel.
He had not only composed a great plot, but the language he used was a feast of words. His lyrical descriptions of the hills and hollows made me homesick for Kentucky. His sentences and paragraphs sang just like Ike’s fiddle. I no sooner read The End than I went back to the beginning and read the novel through a second time just to enjoy Mack’s delicious writing. He used such wonderful words in his novel. I had to smile when one of them was eschew.
I wrote Mack a letter to congratulate him and to let him know how very much I had enjoyed his book. I also mentioned that I had collected several boxes of donated books for his library and promised to ship them along with the used textbooks as soon as the school board gave their approval. I watched the mail every day, hoping for a letter from Mack in return. Instead, the doorbell rang one morning while I was helping my mother in the kitchen.
I went to answer it with flour in my hair and wearing a smudged apro
n—and there was Mack. He wore a suit and tie, his hair neatly cut and combed. I had forgotten how tall he was.
“Mack! Wait . . . how . . . why didn’t you write and tell me you were coming?”
“I thought I’d surprise you the way you surprised me, remember? Showing up on my doorstep with your suitcase?”
I was thrilled to see him, yet all I could do was stand and stare at him. And Mack stared back. Mother finally broke the spell when she called from the kitchen, “Who’s at the door, Alice?”
“Um . . . You won’t believe it, Mother. Mack is here. My friend from Kentucky? The librarian I told you about?”
She came into the living room, drying her hands on a towel so she could shake his hand. “Well, don’t leave him standing there, Alice. Invite him in. Offer him something to drink.”
I eventually recovered from my shock and led Mack inside to make proper introductions. Mother offered him a chair in our front room and brought him a cold drink. I sat down on the sofa across from him, marveling at how Mack could look so completely at home in my living room in Blue Island. My mind began to spin with a hundred questions for him.
“How is everything in Acorn? Are the two families still living peacefully?”
“Yes, remarkably so. They’ve even begun rebuilding the church together.”
“Have you heard from Maggie? Has she come back to Acorn?”
“No, not yet.”
“How’s Belle? Does she miss me?”
Mack smiled. “You know, Belle doesn’t say very much, but I’m certain she does miss you. She isn’t getting nearly enough exercise now that you’re gone, and she’s looking a little pudgy. I asked Alma to please ride her once in a while.”
“Are you keeping up with your work at the library? I seem to recall that it was quite a mess when I first arrived, with books piled everywhere and cards that needed to be filed.”
“Oh, it’s a mess again,” he said, laughing. “And now that the feud has ended, we have a lot more patrons. By the way, you might be interested to know that I used some of my advance money from the novel to put in electricity and a pump for the well. We finally have indoor plumbing and lights.”
“Really? I can’t imagine that . . . What happened to my garden?”
“We had a great harvest, Alice. Faye and Marjorie helped Lillie and me with the canning.”
Thinking about Acorn made me teary-eyed. I missed that place. “And how is Miss Lillie?” I asked.
Mack’s smile faded. “That’s another reason I came to see you. I wanted to tell you the news in person, not in a letter . . . She’s gone, Alice. She had a long life, a hard life. But at least she went peacefully. I brought breakfast to her in bed one morning, and she was gone . . .” Mack’s voice choked with grief.
I couldn’t stop my tears, either. I could barely talk. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“I’m glad you found Buster for her, and that she got to learn something about her son.”
“You helped me find him, Alice. I’ll always be grateful to you. And for typing Lillie’s book, too. The university is going to publish it.”
I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, but it was damp in a matter of minutes as my tears continued to fall. “Lillie once told me that she was hanging on to life because she wanted to see you settled down, with your book published and a good wife by your side.”
Mack smiled. “Did she now?”
“Yes. And before I left, she told me you’d found the perfect wife. I’m assuming things worked out for you and your girlfriend in Washington?”
“What do you mean?”
“The woman who helped you find Buster. I figured you and her—”
“You mean Miss Anson?”
“I think that was her name.”
Mack laughed out loud. “Alice, I met Catherine Anson at Berea College. She was one of my history teachers. She retired from there a few years ago. She’s in her seventies.”
“Well, who did Lillie mean, then?”
He moved forward to the edge of his chair. His voice got very quiet. “It’s funny you should ask. I know it sounds ridiculous, but . . .” He looked embarrassed. “Not long before Lillie died, she told me that I should marry you.”
“What?”
Mack did a perfect imitation of Lillie’s scratchy voice and thick accent: “ ‘Honey, why do you think the Good Lord sent that gal down here to us in Kentucky—and why I kept her here? God wants you to marry her!’ ”
“Oh boy.”
“I know. I thought she was crazy, too.” Mack waited until I looked at him, and our eyes met. “But I trust Lillie’s judgment, Alice . . . don’t you?”
I was speechless.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he continued. “And the more I did, the more I began to see that maybe the idea wasn’t so crazy, after all. So I decided to come here in person to pick up the books . . . and the closer I got, the more I couldn’t wait to see you. And so I’ve been wondering . . .” For a man who wrote words for a living, Mack was becoming very tongue-tied. “If I were to stick around Illinois for a while, and if we had a chance to get to know each other better . . . I mean, we’d have a lot of things to talk about first, and I know you were once sweet on Ike Arnett . . .”
“It never would have worked out for Ike and me,” I said. “We’re too different.”
“Well . . . what do you think about you and me?”
I smiled when I remembered the first day I’d met Mack and how he’d sat cross-legged on the floor in the library foyer caressing the cover of one of the books I’d brought him. He had even lifted it to his nose to inhale the scent. I remembered my surprise when he’d used the word eschew. I pictured him holding baby Feather in his arms, singing to her, as thunder rumbled and rain dripped from the cabin ceiling. I remembered how panicked I had been at the thought of losing him when we faced the wildcat and the barrel of Maggie’s rifle.
I took so long remembering all of these things that Mack finally said, “Don’t leave me hanging here, Alice. Please . . . tell me what you think.”
What did I think? Hadn’t I lectured Freddy about taking a chance on love and jumping in with both feet? My logical side said that a mutual love of books was an excellent starting point for any relationship, and that I had much more in common with Mack than I’d ever had with Gordon or Ike. What better match could there be than between a man who loved to write books and a woman who loved to read them? And even if I threw logic out the window, a life with Mack was certain to be an adventure. Our time together had been an adventure already.
“What do I think?” I repeated. My smile must have given me away. Before I could finish, Mack leaped to his feet and grabbed my hands, pulling me up to face him. Then he planted a kiss on me that made me forget all about Ike Arnett’s kisses.
When he pulled away and I could breathe again, I looked him in the eye and said, “I think Miss Lillie is the wisest woman I’ve ever met.”
Author’s Note
President Franklin Roosevelt founded his relief program, the New Deal, in 1933 to help alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. One of the most innovative programs of Roosevelt’s Work Projects Administration was the Packhorse Library Project. Considered a rousing success, the program employed mainly women who served their neighbors and community by bringing reading materials to isolated one-room schoolhouses and homes located in the very rural and remote areas of eastern Kentucky.
The packhorse librarians provided not only entertainment in the form of books and magazines, but also practical help on home health care, cooking, agriculture, parenting, canning hygiene, and machinery. They also opened the world to these isolated people, allowing them to learn not only about their own government and country, but of lands and people across the globe.
The inspiration for this novel came from a children’s nonfiction book titled Down Cut Shin Creek: The Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky by Kathi Appelt and Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer. It tells th
e true story of the packhorse librarians, complete with photographs. Many thanks to my editor, Sarah Long, for bringing this book to my attention as a great premise for a story.
I’m also grateful to Wayne Collier and his wife, Jean, for sharing Kentucky history with me, and for taking me on a journey into the mountains of eastern Kentucky where I saw the real Cut Shin Creek. The mines and villages and creeks in the beautiful mountains of Kentucky inspired the fictional town of Acorn and Wonderland Creek.
Discussion Questions
What were some of the lessons Alice learned as she stepped out of the imaginary world of books and into real life? What did she discover about life that was different from reading about it in fiction?
Which specific books and genres of stories “sprang to life” for Alice, a lover of novels, while she was in Kentucky?
In what ways was Alice different after her visit to Wonderland Creek? Which events or persons had the biggest influence on her?
Compare the three men in Alice’s life: Gordon Walters, Ike Arnett, and Mack. How did each of them view Alice? How did they influence how she viewed herself?
What events in Miss Lillie’s past shaped her life and her faith? Were any of her actions in the novel contrary to her role as a spiritual leader in Acorn and a woman of faith? If so, do you think her actions were justified?
Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). How was the truth of this verse demonstrated in Acorn, Kentucky?
How did Alice’s shallow faith as a “preacher’s kid” grow or change? Compare her faith journey with Miss Lillie’s, Maggie’s, and Mack’s.
What did Alice learn about relationships from these people in Acorn: the packhorse librarians, June Ann and Feather, Maggie and Opal Coots, Mamaw and Faye’s boys, Ike Arnett and his family, Clint and Gladys, the other patrons on her route, the sheriff, and even Belle the horse?