This is the third book in the Big Stone Gap series. The novel presents everyday events in the life of a family and their community, throwing in a blend of different-yet-same cultures. As is usual with this author, the flow of the events is very smooth, and the storytelling is exquisite and somewhat sentimental. The variety and depth of the characters add poignancy and insight to the story.

I have read several other books by Trigiani, which were mostly about the Italian culture in New York. I haven’t read the earlier Big Stone Gap stories, which may have been a mistake. If I had, maybe I would feel more charitably toward Ave Maria, the main character, who has some insight into her own actions, but she still cannot help making mistakes with raising her daughter Etta who in the beginning is thirteen, and through the course of the plot, grows into an eighteen-year-old who insists in her own right to live her life the way she wants to.

Fact is, I didn’t like Ave Maria very much, even if she was not a bad person, but her flaws rubbed me the wrong way. Mainly, while being married to Jack Mac, she had some feelings for another man, Pete, and while visiting Italy, she refused to go with him to a special place where in an earlier book, she might have had a relationship with Pete. If she had gone to that place the second time and rejected Pete, I would have believed in her true love for her husband which she insisted she had at the end of the novel. Instead, she copped out and refused to go to that place, not trusting herself. This, I think, is where Trigiani, as a writer, pushed her into something. This type of pushing the characters into where the author wants them to go is very rare for this author. Still, Ave Maria is a well-meaning, likable, strictly righteous, but flawed, character. I wish I had met her in the earlier books first, though.

Of the secondary characters, Iva Lou, Spec, Fleeta, Pearl, and Theodore are truly authentic Virginians. They are quirky but real, and they reflect the mountainous Appalachian culture with their actions and speech patterns. They were the true-to-life characters who convinced me into reading this book to the end.

Other than the characters I mostly related to, Etta MacChesney is what this story is mostly about. Etta is a likable character even if complicated as a teenager. She is a normal teen with average teenage issues that are almost always misunderstood by her mother. As an aside, the mother-daughter relationship here was disconcerting to me. It might just have mirrored real life, but one would expect more understanding and forgiving from a supposedly good mother.

I liked the author’s showing us the resemblance of the people of the Italian Alps to those in Big Stone Gap. This leaves me with a good feeling that people are the same or similar everywhere, no matter how far apart.

entertainment and appreciation of this author's impeccable storytelling, regardless of her other assets.

the storytelling and the characterization, although Ave Maria's character rubbed me the wrong way, at times.

Adriana Trigiani is the author of eighteen books in fiction and nonfiction, published in 38 languages.

I like Adriana Trigiani's ease and smoothness with her storytelling. Some of us may like one story more than the others, but this depends on our personal assessments of the validity of the characters and plot. There is a plot and good-enough characterization here, but her storytelling is the crowning glory of this author.

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Created May 26, 2020 at 11:46am • Submit your own review...