Why Dolly Parton Secretly Recorded A 15-Track Album As A Gift To An Author: 'I Was Stunned'

Dolly Parton secretly recorded a 15-track album as a gift to an author.

Kim Michele Richardson, a writer from Kentucky, recently spoke about the unforgettable gift she received from the legendary country star. Parton’s representatives confirmed to PEOPLE on August 25, “after bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dolly departed her Earthly life today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center surrounded by loved ones.” She was 80. Parton opted to keep her cancer battle private. She’s since been laid to rest in a private service for immediate family beside husband Carl Dean.

Richardson shared that she received an unreleased album from Parton, which the beloved singer-songwriter created after reading Richardson’s bestselling historical fiction novel. Richardson published The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek in 2019. The story is set in the 1930s in her home state of Kentucky, focused on a librarian with a rare genetic skin condition who brings books and other items to families in the Appalachian mountains. It was inspired by the Pack Horse Library Project in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Parton, a lifelong supporter of literacy (including via the Imagination Library), sent Richardson a 15-track collection inspired by The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.

Richardson “was stunned,” she recently told WDRB+WAVE, local Fox and NBC affiliates (respectively) in Louisville, Kentucky. She said she received the album, about four years ago. “Dolly’s voice is very strong in there. At times, it sounds like a very young Dolly, and you’re going to laugh, you’re going to cry... some of them will become anthems, I feel.

“We’re working on things now,” Richardson said of the process to release Parton’s music publicly. WDRB+WAVE noted that the process was in motion before Parton’s passing last month. “For someone just to be a small rhinestone in her big, sparkly life, you know, it was unprecedented.”