Hill Women was one of the most interesting books I read in 2020. Cassie Chambers – a lawyer with degrees from two Ivy League schools – walks us through her life and the lives of her grandmother, mother, and aunt in Owsley County, Kentucky, one of the poorest counties in the entire country. Through her firsthand account, she gives us a glimpse into a part of history and also into present-day America with a unique perspective.
I have read a few books on life in the Appalachian mountains (notably The Giver of Stars this year), but they have all been fictional accounts set in the early 1900s. Cassie’s story is not one of days gone by; rather, she gives us Appalachia as it is today. She doesn’t use time to distance the reader from that place. She highlights the poverty, the drug epidemic, the domestic abuse, and the utter lack of education, healthcare, and opportunities that plagues the area right now. It was both humbling and heartbreaking to read.
Chambers tackles a huge amount of content in this book, and she handles it expertly. She calls it a tribute to her family, but it’s more than just that. First, it’s an autobiography. She carefully dissects her upbringing in the mountains, her parents’ emphasis on education, the opportunities she managed to take, her college career (Yale and Harvard), and her work as a lawyer back in the county that raised her. In laying out her life, she also presents the history of her grandmother (“Granny”), her aunt Ruth, and her mother Wilma – the hill women who raised her. I would label that discussion as the second major theme: this joint biography of those three women.
Granny was a child bride, married at 15 to a man in his 30s whom she barely knew. She raised seven children, woke before dawn, and worked until dark to put food on the table. She cared for her husband as he fought Alzheimer’s for years. And despite her poverty, she never hesitated to give meals away to those who needed it. Aunt Ruth, the older of Granny’s two daughters, was a hard-worker who almost solely ran their tobacco farm. She was independent and remained unmarried until her 40s, something fairly uncommon in that region. She never graduated high school. And then there’s Chambers’ mother Wilma – beautiful, spirited, intelligent Wilma. Not only was she the first to graduate high school, she was also the first in her family to go to college. She married at 19, gave birth to Cassie, and fought to finish her degree while raising her. From there, she worked numerous jobs, fought an auto-immune disease that stumped doctors, and gave her daughter every opportunity she could to make something of herself.
That part of the book was very heartwarming. These were incredibly tough, extraordinarily loving ladies who not only made the Appalachian mountains home for Cassie but also taught her she could move those mountains if she put her mind to it.
The third part of the book I’d have to call an exposé on the poverty and injustices facing that community. Chambers does not shy away from the facts. She provides an intimate, detailed account of the social issues. The poverty is astounding, so severe I could hardly fathom it. The lack of education and the disinterest the community even has towards it is bizarre. There is fear of doctors and hardly any notion of healthcare. There is rampant domestic abuse. The drug epidemic is frightening. Frankly, it felt like I was reading about another country, not a county in Kentucky. Eye-opening.
Chambers is honest in her account of these things. She doesn’t shy away from realities with which she struggled/struggles, like her granny’s child marriage. Chambers admits it was hard for her, when she got older, to reconcile the fact that the marriage should have been illegal along with her experiences watching her grandparents love and serve each other until death parted them. She fights her struggles of feeling privileged with her education, travel experiences, and wealth in comparison to her family members who remain rooted in the mountains and in poverty.
There’s a lot of content in this book. I felt like it was laid out relatively well and discussed efficiently. There were a few topics that dragged at times, but the pacing was generally very good. I also really enjoyed the legal battles she discusses in the latter part of the book when she begins practicing in her community; as someone who used to work in the legal field, those kinds of things always grab my attention. The community and family ties in Owsley County, despite everything they faced daily, was refreshing. They always have each others’ backs, no matter what.
The book did get a little political towards the end. It was handled tastefully, but I prefer not to read politics in my books. If I am going to read about it, I have to be in the right mood. I use books as an escape, so I was a little disappointed to encounter that in a few chapters. Because of that and because the story dragged some in places, I gave the book four stars. But all in all, I really enjoyed reading this intimate account of the hill women. It was well-written, inspiring, heartwarming, and heart-wrenching all at the same time. I definitely recommend this book!
Copyright to Cassie Chambers and Ballantine Books.