Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of rape, sexual abuse, prejudice, and suicide.

The “book woman,” a librarian, finds a hanged body in the mountains. There is a live baby beneath the body in the dirt. The librarian checks the color of the corpse, noticing that it is blue.

At the beginning of 1936, Pa adjusts the courting candle outside the house where he lives with Cussy Marry, who narrates the story. Used for timekeeping, the candle measures the length of a suitor’s visit based on how long it burns. Pa wants Cussy Mary to get married and quit her job as a librarian for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). He promised her mother that he would ensure their daughter was respectable. However, she says that she is respectable: She makes $28 a month delivering books.

Pa, who works as a miner, thinks that Cussy Mary’s job could be dangerous for her. She could get sick, and he worries it’s not respectable. She argues that the books help educate people and that they do good. She learned about the place her name comes from, Cussy, France, from reading about it in National Geographic.