GodPretty in the Tobacco Field

Gunnar Bishop assumes guardianship of his five-year-old niece RubyLyn after her parents die. Now, in 1969, RubyLyn ("Roo") is 15 and works in her uncle's tobacco field in Nameless, Kentucky. Poverty surrounds them and Gunnar's overly strict rules confine her. Though Roo has a home, food, and clothes on her back she longs for more.

Roo finds diversion by making paper fortune tellers including her realistic drawings and prophecies. She gives them to the residents of Nameless who believe she possesses the "gift" by her predictions, which are based on hunches. Some are on target, though it's mostly luck and her misplaced dreams to escape the hardship and prejudice of the town.

Gunnar, ornery and mean, disdains Roo's talent and never praises her for anything—especially her work in the fields. He devises elixirs from herbs when he believes she is sassing him, forcing her to ingest them despite the fact they are painful, causing her gums and teeth to bleed. He also mixes other concoctions for illnesses, as Roo states below:

"Gunnar'd preferred his medicine potions of bark, root, and coal oil, too, over the doc's visits. Most hill folk did. Once when I was little and couldn't shake a bad cold, Gunnar'd feed me heaping spoonfuls of coal oil and molasses for two weeks."

If he thinks Roo is misbehaving he'll lecture her, demanding she be "GodPretty" (the term described below) while feeling no remorse for his behavior.

"As sure as ugly is found in the morning addict waiting to score in the parking lot of a Kentucky Shake King, there as GodPretty in the child who toiled in the tobacco field, her fingers whispering of arthritic days to come."

Gunnar finds his solace in "talking" to the ashes of his dead wife, which reside on the mantle, as well as through whiskey.

Along with escapism from reality through her illustrations, Roo is best friends with Rainey Ford, her black neighbor who also works Gunnar's fields. Theirs is more than a friendship, and they plan to leave the hills for a better life.

The mountain life is rife with not only poverty, but also illiteracy, and many do not attend school after the eighth grade; however Roo is determined to graduate and better herself.

Some neighbors, especially the Crocketts, are nasty and have a vendetta against Gunnar. The Crockett sons think nothing of having their way with or beating the girls. Roo's friend Henny Stump—whom she considers a sister—falls for one of the boys; she’s looking for a way out from her drunkard father and her mother who keeps having babies, much to her distress.

Henny and Roo are troubled when Henny's older sibling gets pregnant by a Crockett. Roo predicts the baby will be a girl, and Henny's mother demands Roo attend the delivery, which upsets her. Mrs. Stump sells the infant to an affluent, childless couple, saying they cannot afford to feed another mouth. 

The summer of 1969 lingers on with Roo witnessing more hardship and pain, but her friendship with Henny, Rainey, and a trader woman named Rose Law, who brings Roo books and other items, offers brightness to her life. Soon tragedy strikes, revealing secrets and changing lives.

Kim Michele Richardson aptly portrays the impoverished life of the hill people with her images of the beauty yet hardship of the mountains as well as the way this particular world experienced discrimination in the sixties.