One Woman’s Quiet Mission to Provide Access to Books

By R. Gabriel Villalobos

On a clear spring morning in West Texas, when the wind is already lifting dust off the highway, and the sky feels impossibly wide, Margaret Peterson loads books into a van. Hardcovers and paperbacks, children’s stories and science texts, battered field guides, and cloth-bound classics—thousands of pages headed for people who, as she likes to say, “just need something good to read.”

Peterson’s path to this work was anything but predictable. Trained as a molecular biologist, life took her from California to Germany, where she became well-known and respected in academia. She moved back to the US and taught at universities in Texas, then stepped away from academia to homeschool her two children because she saw bright students slipping through the cracks in under-resourced public schools.

Her first taste of grassroots outreach began with sewing machines. She traveled to Candelaria, TX, to help distribute food and was struck by how much the local families were struggling just to meet basic school requirements. Uniforms were mandatory; money and access were scarce.

Peterson imagined a practical solution. If the women could sew, they could make uniforms themselves. The women went from sewing uniforms to creating artful quilt tops that sold at a nearby State Park gift shop. It made a change in the people’s lives. Peterson realized she could help people build dignity and opportunity with tools and ideas that fit the realities of the borderlands.

The book project grew from that same impulse, sharpened by a practical question: what kind of outreach would be just as meaningful as sewing, but easier to carry in and out of remote communities? A pastor suggested books. Literacy, he reminded her, is its own form of medicine. Books are heavy, Peterson thought—but not as heavy as sewing machines.

Around 2015, she began quietly experimenting. She set up tables of free books at small-town festivals and community events across West Texas. At first, she focused on children’s books, picturing kids carrying home an adventure or a bedtime story. But she quickly noticed the parents standing on the other side of the table, watching their kids choose, hands empty.

“Oh man,” they would say. “Nothing for us.” Peterson expanded her inventory—novels, biographies, history, practical guides.

Peterson estimates she now distributes at least 10,000 free books every year. The logistics are their own kind of choreography. Most of the books originate from estate sales. Libraries across West Texas and into New Mexico call when they cull their shelves, too.

When she travels this month to Carlsbad, she’ll set up at the Living Desert Zoo State Park to hand out books during the day. This year, she’ll have time to visit the Caverns. It’s been a while for her, so she’s excited.

Peterson also sees herself as a caretaker of physical objects in an increasingly disposable age. She handles midcentury editions of “Alice in Wonderland” or “Black Beauty,” runs a finger along the cloth spine, and can’t help but compare them to their flimsy modern cousins. She has watched quality decline across decades of printings—the paper thinning, bindings weakening, covers losing the small flourishes that once signaled respect for the reader.

The children who pick up her free classics are not just receiving stories; they are inheriting artifacts from a time when books were built to last.

In the end, her project is disarmingly simple: take unwanted books from where they are no longer needed and deliver them to people who might find joy, escape, or understanding in their pages. The geography is specific—West Texas, Eastern New Mexico, the desert towns and border villages that populate her map—but the idea is universal.

In a region where distances are long and resources often thin, Margaret Peterson has built a different kind of network: a quiet, persistent circulation of stories.

Knowing that Carlsbad is home to people who often get involved with good causes, Margaret quietly expressed hope that like-minded city residents might join her in keeping people connected to the printed page. Whether they’re ready to do some good or just looking for some good reads this year, locals should visit the Living Desert Zoo from March 16 to 19 and pick something up.