Big Stone Gap

New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2001. First Ballantine edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Good. Signed by author. Cover has some wear and soiling.. Trade paperback. Glued binding. [8], 272, [40] p. Big Stone Gap Novels. The warm and very funny story of a small town is told by Ave Maria Mulligan, a 35-year-old self-proclaimed spinster, whose comfortable routine is about to be disrupted forever. "Funny, charming, and original". --Fannie Flagg. From WIkipedia: "Adriana Trigiani is an American novelist, television writer, producer and film director. Trigiani grew up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia and attended Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She was a writer for The Cosby Show and its spin-off series A Different World before beginning on novels. In 1996, she won the "Most Popular Documentary" award at the Hamptons International Film Festival for directing the Queens of the Big Time. The following year, she served as co-producer on the documentary film Green Chimneys. In 2001, Trigiani wrote a novel about the town titled Big Stone Gap, based on a screenplay by the same name she authored. It was followed by three sequels, Big Cherry Holler, Milk Glass Moon, and Home to Big Stone Gap. Aside from that series, she has written Rococo, Queen of the Big Time, and Lucia, Lucia, which became a best-seller in Britain. Very Valentine, was published in February 2009, and followed by Brava Valentine Valentine in 2010. She also co-authored "Cooking With My Sisters: One Hundred Years of Family Recipes" with Mary Trigiani, her sister. The family memoir-meets-cookbook includes the contributions of their three sisters and their mother. In 2008 Trigiani served as the Appalachian writer in residence at Shepherd University." From the author's website on this book: "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 town folks 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."