During the Depression, thousands lived on the brink of starvation. In 1935 President Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration which was designed to get people back on their feet. One of its most innovative programs was the Pack Horse Library Project of Eastern Kentucky.

Thoroughly researched and illustrated with period photographs, this is the story of one of the WPA’s greatest successes. People from all over contributed books, magazines and newspapers, but it was the librarians themselves—determined young women earning just $28 a month—who brought the hope of a wider world to the people in the hollows of Kentucky’s Cumberland Mountains.