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

Substituting a pickup for a pack horse, one woman is carrying on a tradition of delivering books to out-of-the-way places, this time in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

by Anya Petrone Slepyan
February 14, 2025

(Republished with permission from the Daily Yonder)

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 September 2024. Though she now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, she saw the extent of the damage the hurricane caused during frequent trips up the mountain to bring food and supplies to family members in the Asheville area. 

“I saw all the devastation and I thought, ‘what can I do?’” Turner said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “I cannot operate heavy machinery. I cannot rebuild this whole area. What can I do that would be impactful and make a difference?” 

As a military wife and mother of three, Turner has been through difficult seasons herself, and said that she always found solace in reading. She had also learned about the historic packhorse librarians from a number of books, including Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. So she thought, why not take books toShe began by asking friends and neighbors for gently used books that she could deliver on her trips up the mountain. The project grew quickly in the months following the hurricane.

“It started with one box of books on my porch,” Turner said. “Now I have thousands of books [to give away] in my house.”

Books for Burnsville
On November 2, 2024, Turner and her husband pulled into the parking lot of the West Burnsville Baptist Church in rural Yancey County, North Carolina. Along with a handful of volunteers, including Turner’s parents, they started passing out thousands of books that had been donated from around the country. 

More than 500 people attended the event, including Burnsville residents Jamie Black and her 10-year-old daughter Jenavieve, a voracious reader who had been anxiously awaiting the event for weeks. The family had been without power for a month, but Black had seen a post about the event on Facebook and thought it would help her daughter, who like other children in the area, had missed a significant amount of school. 

“Books take you away on an adventure,” Jenavieve said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “It doesn’t matter what’s going on around you if you’re reading a good book.” 

That’s one of the ideas behind the 21st Century Packhorse Librarian project, according to Turner.

 people like a modern-day packhorse librarian? 

“I think [reading] gives people a respite from their own story, so they can really process and heal from their trauma more gently,” Turner said. 

More than 100 people in North Carolina were killed by Hurricane Helene, and the September storm caused a record-breaking $59.6 billion in damages, according to the state budget office. Over 5,000 homes will need to be rebuilt, with thousands of businesses damaged or closed as a result of the storm. North Carolina Governor Josh Stein is urging state legislators to increase recovery spending, even as President Trump, who visited North Carolina in late January, is enacting plans to dissolve the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Since October, Turner has organized events in nine communities in western North Carolina, and given away more than 9,000 books for free. The books are arranged by age group, and there is no limit to how many books people can take. 

“I don’t put a limit on it. Because say someone is taking four tote bags full of books – that person could have lost their whole house and all their books,” Turner said. 

Donations have poured in from across the country, Turner said, with people driving from as far as Texas and Ohio to deliver books. People can also donate books through Turner’s Amazon wishlists, as well as by mail. A number of children’s authors associated with Christian publishing and media organizations such as Story Warren and Rabbit Room have donated books. Turner, who is Christian, has also made sure to keep high-quality, large-print bibles in stock. 

Though she isn’t able to read everything that comes through, she tries to curate her selections. She avoids books with sexually explicit content and references to the occult, and prioritizes books that she considers to be healing and uplifting, especially classic literature. Many of the books on her wishlists are the same as those distributed by the original packhorse librarians nearly a century earlier. 

“There’s a lot to say about the power of story in the classics,” Turner said. “Bless those kids, they love Diary of a Wimpy Kid and I can’t stand that book. I bring it for them, but I also try to get a good book in their hands as well.” 

Bearing Witness

According to its Facebook page, the primary mission of the 21st Century Packhorse Librarian project is to “distribute quality literature, free of charge, throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains, ensuring that individuals and families – especially in rural and remote areas – have access to great books.” 
But Turner has found that her role goes beyond handing out books to those who want them. She spends most of her time at each event talking to people, and hearing their stories. This is both rewarding and challenging, Turner said. 
“I get to carry a little bit of their burdens for them, and hear how much bringing books means to them. But it’s also a bit emotionally overwhelming at times, because we hear not only stories from the storm, but all sorts of things we wouldn’t imagine we’d hear,” she said.
Turner also uses her platform on Facebook to bring awareness to the destruction in communities she visits, posting pictures of places like Marshall, North Carolina, that were devastated by the storm. She says bearing witness to the communities’ distress is part of her mission to keep attention on the ongoing recovery efforts.

“The rest of the world has moved on with their lives, and people aren’t thinking about it anymore,” Turner said. “I don’t want anyone to feel forgotten.” 
Recovering from disasters like Helene takes years, but Turner is in it for the long haul. 
“People keep asking me how long I plan to do this. And the answer is always ‘as long as God wants me to,” Turner said. 
And though the project was born as a response to the hurricane, Turner feels the books she brings help address a deeper need in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 
“The more I hear, the more I realize that these books aren’t just disaster relief, they’re life relief.”