An evening at the library
An hour on the letters and ledgers behind The Horse Country Ledger, with plenty of time for questions.
Event details
June Abernathy
Kentucky history, told through the ledgers families left behind.
Author of The Horse Country Ledger, Bourbon and Brick and Paper Schoolhouses.
Latest book
The Horse Country Ledger
One family's account books survived a hundred years of feed bills, vet's visits and near misses. June reads them the way a neighbour would talk across a fence.
More about June
June Abernathy taught high school history in Lexington for twenty-one years. She writes the history she used to tell at the front of the room: a family, a place, and the ledgers and letters that give both of them away.
Her research has taken her into horse farm offices, small distilleries on the Kentucky River and one-room schoolhouses in the hollows of Appalachia. She speaks at libraries, historical societies and schools, and leads two walking history tours a year.
Available wherever books are sold.
The Horse Country Ledger
A hundred years of horse country, read out of the books one farm kept
The Ledger follows a Kentucky family from the first broodmare bought on credit to the year the farm nearly went under. Every chapter starts where the account books do: the feed bills, the vet's notes, and the letters folded between the pages.
Also in print: Bourbon and Brick, on how small distilleries rebuilt Kentucky's river towns, and Paper Schoolhouses, on the one-room schools of Appalachia.
What readers say
From the librarians, teachers and reading groups who have hosted June.
She makes an account book read like a novel
I came for the horses and stayed for the family. June takes a pile of receipts and turns it into something you cannot put down, and she never once makes the reader feel like a beginner.
Ruth Calloway, library director
A generous guide to Kentucky history
Her chapters move, and they never talk down to you. Our reading group finished all three books and started over at the front.
History the way it should be told
June gave our students an hour on a one-room schoolhouse and they asked questions until the bell rang. Few visiting speakers do that.
Upcoming events
Talks at libraries and schools, and two walking tours a year through Kentucky river towns.
Bourbon and brick walking tour
A two-hour walk past the warehouses and storefronts the small distilleries rebuilt after the river trade moved on.
Event details
School visits and one-room schools
A classroom hour on what a one-room schoolhouse kept, who did the keeping, and what the county ran short of.
Event details
Bookings
Bring June to your library, school or tour group
Talks run about forty-five minutes with time for questions, and June brings the documents: the ledgers, the school register, the photographs nobody has seen in fifty years.
Dig a little deeper
Where the three books came from, and where June is walking next.
From the notebook
Short pieces on Kentucky history, written between books.
How to read a horse farm's account book
A ledger tells you what a family spent, and then it tells you what they were afraid of. Here is where to look first, and which columns to ignore.
Read the piece
What a one-room schoolhouse kept
Attendance rolls, a water bucket, and the winter the county ran out of chalk.
The distillery that rebuilt a river town
Before the warehouses there was a burned block, a bond issue and four families willing to sign for it.