National Network for Equitable Library Service

After rising from poverty to earn a Harvard degree, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong "hill women" who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region-an uplifting and eye-opening memoir for readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Educated. Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County is the poorest county in Kentucky and the second poorest in the country. Buildings are crumbling and fields sit vacant, as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women are finding creative ways to subsist in their hollers in the hills. Cassie Chambers grew up amidst these hollers, and through her Granny, her aunt Ruth, and her mother, Wilma, she crafts a story of struggle and progress that traces her own path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Cassie's Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children, and who, despite her poverty, wouldn't hesitate to give the last bite of pie or vegetables from her garden to a struggling neighbor. Her two daughters would take very different paths: strong-willed Ruth-the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county-stayed on the family farm, while beautiful Wilma became the only one of Granny's kids to graduate high school, then moved an hour away to attend college. Married at eighteen and pregnant with Cassie at twenty, Wilma beat the odds to finish college. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated from the larger world. Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County while Wilma studied. With her "hill women" values guiding her, she went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her knowledge and financial security, its privileged world felt far from Cassie's reality, and she headed back home to help her fellow hill women as a pro bono lawyer. Appalachian women face issues that are all too common: domestic violence, the opioid crisis, a world that seems more divided by the day. With nuance and heart, Cassie uses their stories to illuminate a region that many think they know but few actually understand.