Up Troublesome Creek
by Lorvoker
Historical
In 1936 Kentucky, packhorse librarian Ruth Ellen Pruitt rides a one-eyed mule named Deuteronomy up Troublesome Creek and finds a saddlebag of primers burned in the road below the Coyle holler — set alight by widower Amos Coyle, who lost his eldest son at a mine strike after the boy read a union pamphlet and means to keep his last three children unlettered and alive. His daughter Pearl is secretly teaching herself to read from Ruth's torn-out pages, and the county will cut the route unless Ruth signs up ten new readers by Christmas. Ruth must choose between teaching Pearl behind her father's b…