Lum by Libby Ware

 

Lum isn't like the others in her mountain town in Virginia.  She was born with a different body, one that could be male or female.  Her mother told her she could never marry and the boys who knew bullied and teased her.  As she grew up, she became the one in the family who cooked and cleaned.  Now in her thirties, she spends her time moving from one relative's house to another, no place to call her own and always at someone else's beck and call.

But changes are about to come to the small town.  The President is planning a scenic mountain route, the Blue Ridge Parkway.  It will bring tourists with their money to the area and new jobs for the tourist trade.  But to make the road, the government needs to buy land and it's coming through Lum and her brothers' family farm.  The town splits into those supporting the plan and those opposing.  Soon there is violence in the air and neighbor is set against neighbor.

Changes are coming to Lum as well.  She is offered a job after spending time taking care of the town's banker when he is home sick for an extended time.  That leads to him offering her a job in the tourist trade that would give her a home of her own and money she can count on.  Can she leave the life she has always known for one with more freedom?

I loved this book.  I grew up near the Blue Ridge Parkway and my family was one of the tourists who went there on Sunday drives for picnics and to see the leaves turn and the stunning mountain views.  There were curvy mountain roads where you couldn't go over twenty or thirty and Mabry Mill with its buckwheat pancakes and chocolate milk.  Ware has captured that mountain magic and created a character in Lum that the reader will fall in love with.  This book is recommended for women's fiction readers.