Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains

Cassie Chambers

Jan 2020 · Sold by Ballantine Books

About this eBook

After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region.

“Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review)

“A gritty, warm love letter to Appalachian communities and the resourceful women who lead them.”—Slate

Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County, Kentucky, is one of the poorest places in the country. Buildings are crumbling as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women find creative ways to subsist in the hills.
 
Through the women who raised her, Cassie Chambers traces her path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Granny’s daughter, Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish college. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated from the larger world.
 
Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County. With her “hill women” values guiding her, she went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved home to help rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services. Appalachian women face issues from domestic violence to the opioid crisis, but they are also keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers breaks down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminates a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.

Ratings and reviews

I received a free ARC electronic copy of this memoir from Netgalley, Cassie Chambers, and Random House - Ballantine Books. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this work of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains. This is a memoir I am happy to recommend to friends and family. I recognize all of the women in this work - from right here in the foothills of the high plains desert. So do we all if we were raised by strong, stubborn women. Cassie Chambers is very frank in her look back, giving us all the notion that fitting in, though she did it very well, is not always a good idea. Most of us were feeling our way blindly into the world had we but known it then. You are going to love these ladies. And like me, you will recognize your Mom, or an Aunt, or Great Granny. We fortunate ones can thank them for helping us along the road to life.

About the author

Cassie Chambers grew up in eastern Kentucky. She graduated from Yale College, the Yale School of Public Health, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School, where she was president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, a student-run law firm that represents low-income clients. Chambers then received a Skadden Fellowship to return to Kentucky to do legal work with domestic violence survivors in rural communities. In 2018, she helped pass Jeanette’s Law, which eliminated the requirement that domestic violence survivors pay an incarcerated spouse’s legal fees in order to get a divorce. She lives in Louisville with her husband and their son.