First I should say that I normally don't read much historical fiction, so this just may not be the genre for me. Something about this novel just fell a bit flat for me. The characters and time period didn't feel fully developed. It is the story of a pack horse librarian in rural Kentucky in the 1930s, and one with a blue skin tone at that! I feel like there could have been so much to explore and develop, but we just get the same gloss over page after page: life is hard, people are hungry, and racism abounds. The "romance" was used as a convenient mechanism to drive the climax and racism at the end of the book. Without it, the book would have just kept on plodding along without any meaning. I was perplexed by how the romantic situation came to be in the first place, and then it see that it was merely being used to drive the scene with the sheriff.... well, that doesn't feel genuine.