‘21st Century Packhorse Librarian’ Brings Books to Rural Communities

‘21st Century Packhorse Librarian’ Brings Books to Rural Communities

In the 1930s, women employed by the Works Progress Administration rode pack horses through the mountains of eastern Kentucky, bringing books to rural residents in hard-to-reach places. Nearly a century later, Kirsten Crawford Turner is carrying on that tradition, with the help of a truck and a U-haul rather than a horse and saddle bags. Turner grew up in Shelby, North Carolina in the Appalachian foothills, an area pummeled by Hurricane Helene in…