It's 1978 and 35-year-old Ave Maria Mulligan is the self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains. As the local pharmacist, she's been keeping the townfolks' secrets for years, but she's about to discover a skeleton in her own family's tidy closet that will blow the lid right off her quiet, uneventful life. Soon she finds herself juggling two marriage proposals, conducting a no-holds-barred family feud, directing the prestigious Outdoor Drama and keeping the town's dysfunctional Rescue Squad on its toes.

The crazy-quilt of characters includes Jack MacChesney ("Jack Mac" to his friends), the stoic miner with coal dust on his hands but love in his heart; Iva Lou Wade, the sexpot Bookmobile librarian; Theodore Tipton, band leader extraordinaire; Preacher Elmo Gaspar, the snake-handling Freewill Baptist; and Pearl Grimes, a coal-miner's daughter on the verge of a miraculous transformation, thanks to Ave's intervention.

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PURCHASE INFORMATION

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Category: Fiction
Publisher: Random House

Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Pub Date: October 2006
Price: $25.95
ISBN: 1-4000-6008-7

Format: Abridged Compact Disc
Pub Date: October 2006
Price: $27.95
ISBN: 0-7393-1944-2

Format: Hardcover, 432 pages
Pub Date: October 2006
Price: $28.95
ISBN: 0-7393-2681-3

Format: Abridged Audio Download
Pub Date: October 2006
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-7393-1945-1
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Format: eBook
Pub Date: October 2006
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 1-58836-563-8
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