Mud Creek Medicine: The Life of Eula Hall and the Fight for Appalachia

WINNER of the 2014 Nautilus Silver Book Award in the "Heroic Journeys" category.

From deep in the mountains of Appalachia to the steps of Capitol Hill, Mud Creek Medicine chronicles the life of an iconoclastic woman with a resolute spirit to help her people.

Eula Hall, born into abject poverty in Greasy Creek, Kentucky, found herself — through sheer determination and will — at the center of a century-long struggle to lift up a part of America that is too often forgotten.

Through countless interviews and meticulous research, Kiran Bhatraju, a native of Eastern Kentucky, deftly traces Eula's life from impoverished hired girl to community activist. Eula served as a foot soldier in the War on Poverty, President Lyndon B. Johnson's noble attempt to change the trajectory of a timeless people. That work sparked her determination to follow her own brand of tough-love, bootstrapped compassion for a lifetime.

Eula's story shows how one woman could make a difference through a clear-eyed understanding of the nexus between politics, wealth, labor, and disease. Mud Creek Medicine takes the reader through Eula's experiences with moonshining, labor strikes, and fighting against severe domestic abuse, to eventually building and managing her clinic.

After a mysterious arson in 1982, many people thought the clinic would close forever, but Eula fought back and rebuilt the clinic, which stands today in Floyd County, Kentucky.

Powerful and profound, Mud Creek Medicine challenges perceptions of Appalachia, and shows that the personal stories of individuals in the mountains often do rise to the heights of drama and intrigue, and reach to the depths of the American experience.

Eula Hall's life is no exception. She fought on, and at times risked her life, not for fame or accolades but, in her words, "for the people."