BACK TO BIG STONE GAP BY ADRIANA TRIGIANA

Reviewed By Katherine Vande Brake

Trigiani's latest offering in the Big Stone Gap series is a quick read that rounds out the saga of Ave Maria MacChesney and all the people in her world we have come to know and love. The powerful themes of illegitimacy and the pain it causes reappear in the person of Lovely Carter, a young woman who is determined to find the biological parents she never knew just as Ave Maria longed to meet her biological father in the first novel.

Ave Maria, still smarting watching her nineteen year old daughter Etta marry a a dashing Italian, nurtures discontent through the first half of the book. The shock of her husband Jack's health crisis, the stress of her friend Fleeta Mullins' wedding, the specter of mountaintop removal in Wise County, and contemplating the loneliness of her first Christmas without Etta build the sense of foreboding. A serious falling out between Ave Maria and her long-time friend Iva Lou adds to the pervasive sadness. Could it be a mid-life crisis?

However, all is not hopeless. Ave Maria directs a community theater rendition of The Sound of Music. At the dress rehearsal the male lead falls down a flight of stairs and cannot perform. Theodore Tipton, Ave's old friend and former Powell Valley High band impresario turned New York director conveniently in Big Stone for the Christmas holidays, steps into the role and saves the production, playing every performance to sell-out crowds.

Ave Maria's old flame Pete Rutledge, who still lights her fire, flies her father and his wife in from Italy for Christmas in his private jet. Jack Mac, forced to face his own mortality, begins doing things he has put off his whole life like building a bridge over a mountain stream, and worrying about providing for Ave financially if he should die of a heart attack or black lung, and considering being a consultant for the strip mining company.

The backdrop for the story is life in Big Stone Gap-the rhythms of compounding prescriptions at the pharmacy, Fleeta's success with the Mutual's lunch counter (recipes of typical Southern fare like biscuits and gravy, banana pudding, and holiday cheese log are included), Iva Lou's work at the library, a community party at the John Fox, Jr. house, the Christmas festival of trees at the Southwest Virginia Museum, and Jack Mac's flirtation with the idea of a consulting job for a strip mining company. For both those who know Big Stone and for those who don't, the images are crisp.

A house swap with a couple from Aberdeen, Scotland, rounds out the novel and is the catalyst for significant change. Ave Maria and Jack Mac become ardent lovers again in a lovely Scottish spring. They take time to talk and listen. Etta and Stefano visit and reveal that Etta is pregnant. They meet an old woman relative who has "the sight." And they return "home to Big Stone Gap" contented and peaceful. Ave Maria's worries evaporate and she is finally tranquil.

This book delights, but it is not nearly as strong as the first novel in the series. We readers revel in life on the trail of the lonesome pine in the southwest Virginia mountains. But not even the satisfying comedic conclusions-another wedding (of Fleeta and Otto Olinger), the anticipation of Jack and Ave Maria's first grandchild, and Jack's rejection of the lucrative consulting job with the mountaintop removal company-fill the gap.

My disappointment with the whole is somewhat mitigated by memorable lines like these:

Ave: "Grief makes you feel ancient. I know. You join the worst club in the world. You stand in line with anyone who ever lost someone they loved, and you mourn with them. There's no diversion from it, no quick way through it, no free pass to acceptance. You just have to live through it. At first that seems impossible.

Fleeta Mullins, Melungeon, proprietor of the Mutual's lunch counter: "I learnt a lot, being on the market at my age. Most men want a younger wife. And let's face it, I am many things, but I ain't young. What men is left at my age would make you weep. They're like used cars. They look good on the lot, and you get 'em home and they fall apart."

Ave: "Bitterness is anger with a few years on it. . . . Bitterness prevents us from loving, and without love, we are without sun and water and sustenance-without love, our bodies wither and our souls long to die."

Jack Mac: "You just have to live, Ave, and let life unfold. Say what you mean. You can't always think about what you've lost, or what you don't have, or what you didn't get.... We shouldn't let a day go by when we don't stop and think about what we are to each other and how the best part of that is the part that changes."

I'm glad I read this book. I love the world Trigiani creates, but I long for the wonder I found in the series' first novel when the people were unfamiliar and the story threads were woven more intricately.

---