BIG
CHERRY HOLLER, the extraordinary sequel to BIG STONE GAP,
takes us back to the mountain life that enchanted us in Adriana
Trigiani's best selling debut novel. It's been eight years
since the town pharmacist and long time spinster Ave Maria
Mulligan married coal miner Jack MacChesney. With
her new found belief in love and its possibilities, Ave Maria
makes a life for herself and her growing family, hoping that
her fearless leap into commitment will make happiness stay.
What she didn't count on was that fate, life, and the ghosts
of the past would come to haunt her and, eventually, test
the love she has for her husband. The mountain walls that
have protected her all of her life can not spare Ave Maria
the life lessons she must learn.
BIG CHERRY HOLLER is the story
of a marriage, revealing the deep secrets, the power struggle,
the betrayal and the unmet expectations that exist 
between
husband and wife. It is the story of a community that must
reinvent itself as it comes to grips with the decline of the
coal mining industry. It is the story of an extended family,
the people of Big Stone Gap, who are there for one another
especially when times are tough-including bookmobile librarian
and sexpert Iva Lou Wade Makin, savvy businesswoman Pearl
Grimes, crusty cashier Fleeta Mullins, and Rescue Squad captain
Spec Broadwater, who faces the complications of his double
life. Ave Maria's best friend Theodore Tipton, now band director
at the University of Tennessee, continues to be her chief
counselor and conscience as he reaches the pinnacle of marching
band success.
When Ave Maria
takes her daughter to Italy for the summer, she meets a handsome
stranger who offers her a life beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Ave Maria is forced to confront what is truly important: to
her, to her marriage, and to her family. Brimming with humor,
wisdom, honesty, and the drama and local color of mountain life
from Virginia to Italy, BIG CHERRY HOLLER is a deeply felt,
brilliantly evoked story of two lovers who have lost their way
and their struggle to find one another again.
From the Hardcover edition
