Big Stone Gap

Yet another item on my summer reading list was Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani. Trigiani is this year’s Appalachian Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd and I’ll be teaching Big Stone Gap in my English 204 classes. (I’m also on the committee now, so I am especially invested in Trigiani’s visit to campus.)

Big Stone Gap is a fun book—kind of a perfect summer read, especially for women. It tells the story of Ave Maria Mulligan, a small-town pharmacist and, in her mid-thirties, the “town spinster” of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Early on in the book, Ave, whose mother was an Italian immigrant (a “ferriner”), learns that the man who raised her isn’t her biological father. She finds herself struggling to figure out just who she is, and, of course, there’s a sweet love story working itself out over the course of the novel. I enjoyed it enough to read its first sequel, Big Cherry Holler, which picks up the story about eight years later. There are two more sequels waiting on my nightstand table: Milk Glass Moon (great title, right?) and Return to Big Stone Gap.

One of my favorite things about the Big Stone Gap books so far is Ave Maria and the way Trigiani deftly sketches her character. Consider this passage from the beginning of Big Stone Gap. Let me set the scene a bit: Ave Maria has just observed Pearl Grimes (a rather homely and plain teenage girl) suffer an insult at the hands of Tayloe, the town beauty. Ave fights the urge to comfort Pearl with some trite assurance that beauty is only skin deep or that it’s what is inside that counts. There is a poignant (albeit very cynical) truth to what Ave explains here and it reveals just as much about her as it does about Pearl and Tayloe:

“I let the comment pass. It doesn’t do me any good to try to convince Pearl that beauty comes from within and that age will wither a pretty face. I get a pain in my left temple watching poor Pearl looking up on stage at Tayloe like there is some answer up there. She is hoping that beauty will be truth. But that observation was surely made by the father of a very beautiful daughter, not Pearl’s and surely not mine. Taylor is conceited. But so what? Tayloe, not Pearl, is in the beam of the spotlight. Tayloe, not Pearl, is being examined and appreciated by all sides like a rare ruby. How Pearl wishes she was The One! Of course, I could lie. I could tell Pearl that being the prettiest girl in town is no great shakes, but eventually she would find out the truth. When you’re fifteen, it is everything. And when you’re thirty-five, it’s still something. Beauty is the big fat yellow line down the middle of Powell Valley Road. And it’s best to figure out—and the sooner the better—which side you fall on, because if you don’t do it for yourself, the world will. Why wait for the judgment?”

Trigiani can also be laugh-out-loud funny at times, even as her humor advances her themes and plot. Again, her skill at characterization shows itself in these passages. Characters like Iva Lou, Ave’s good friend—and the town sex-pot, are especially memorable. Here’s a passage in which Iva Lou explains that Ave needs to find her biological father before she can truly love a man. Again, there’s humor in the end, but her observation rings true for this character:

“‘Why do you think I’m trying to help you find him? I know what your problem is and how to fix it. You were told something all your life that was a lie. I happen to think you knew all along that it was a lie. But that is something for you to figure out on your own after all this is over. When people live lies, they stop connecting. When they stop connecting, trust dies. Honey-o, you can’t be with a man because you can’t trust one. You can’t get naked, and I am using that not literally but as a figure of speech. You follow me? To my way of thinking, if you can find your father, it will be a revelation to you. You will be able to place yourself in this world, You will finally know where you belong. You ain’t one of us, Ave Maria. And not because your mama was a feriner. You separated yourself from folks around here. And I don’t mean that to be cruel. You’ve lived here your whole life, but nobody really knows you. The first time I got a glimpse of what makes you tick was that night we read the books over at your house. You were looking at those books like old Kent Vanhook looks at my ass. There was a hunger there, a desire at long last.’”

Finally, Trigiani often does a superb job creating scenes for her readers. Here’s one of my favorites—a description of a fall evening in Big Stone Gap:

“There is excitement in the air anyway, as it is fall, our most luscious season. The mountains around us turn from dark velvet to iridescent taffeta. The leaves of late September are bright green; by the first week in October they change to shimmering gemstone, garnet and topaz and all the purples in between. The mountains seem to be lit from the ground by theatrical footlights. Autumn is our grand opera. It even smells rich this time of year, a fresh mix of balsam and hickory and vanilla smoke. Friday nights are football-game nights, and Saturday nights find everyone in town over at the Carter Family Fold.”

In Big Cherry Holler, she gives us equally impressive descriptions of Italy. Consider this picture of Milan:

“Milan is city of crisp vertical stripes, navy blue, gray, and black. Everything here is angular, from the architecture to the bone structure on the serious faces that brush past us.”

Or this one of her father’s village:

“As we drive into Schilpario, for the first time in a hundred miles, Papa slows down. He has been the mayor of this village for nearly forty years. The houses with their dark beams set off by white stucco, others painted shades of pale blue and taupe and soft green, look like candy tiles glued into the rocky mountainside. Window boxes spill over with small purple blossoms and spike of green plants I have never seen before. ‘Herbs,’ Giacomina tells me.

Etta [Ave's daughter] is thrilled by the waterwheel chugging slowly around in a circle, scooping the crystal water from the stream and sending it flowing over the slats of the old wood, polished smooth from wear. I point to the stream that rushes down the mountain over clean gray stones, then widens and makes a pond next to the cabin by the waterwheel. I show her how everything is connected. I think she understands.”

One last (admittedly quite girly) passage worth sharing, this one from Ave Maria after she spends the night with her lover for the first time:

“When I was little and playing the yard, I found a tiny blue egg in the grass. I looked up in the tree; there, out of my reach, was a nest in the branches. I ran for my mother. She carefully placed the egg in my hands and lifted high off the ground and up into the tree, so that I was eye level with the nest. There were two more tiny blue eggs in the nest. Very gently, I placed the fallen egg at home with the others. This is how I feel in my lover’s bed tonight. I feel that I am safe and at home.”

If you are looking for some fun summer reading (especially if you are a fan of literature that flirts with that hard-to-define label of chick-lit), you could do a lot worse than the Big Stone Gap books.