Big Stone Gap

The Wise County Bookmobile is one of the most beautiful sights in the world to me. When I see it lumbering down the mountain road like a tank, then turning wide and easing into Shawnee Avenue, I flag it down like an old friend.

I’m re-reading old favourite the Big Stone Gap trilogy by Adriana Trigiani. Chicklit? Well maybe, but I love this portrayal of the inhabitants of an Appalachian coal-mining town set in the 1970‘s. Ava Maria Mulligan is the only person of 'Eye-talian’ origin living in Big Stone Gap and since the loss of her mother she feels an outsider in the town she was born in. At 37 she works as a pharmacist and feels she is headed towards spinsterhood until she meets very attractive miner Jack 'Mac’ MacChesney who lives with his mother in Cracker’s Neck Holler.

Like Anne Tyler, Adriana Trigiani has a gift for creating quirky characters. Iva Lou Wade, flirty librarian, driver of the mobile book van and local good-time gal known by her signature scent Coty’s Emeuraude is a brilliant creation. And then there is Fleeta the tough-talking pro-wrestling pharmacy assistant who likes to help herself to the Estee Lauder hand cream on display in the shop.

The beauty of the Appalachian mountains and the changing seasons provide a backdrop to the story and there is a fictional representation of Elizabeth Taylor’s visit to Big Stone Gap in 1978 with her then husband Republican John Warner who was on a campaign trail. Famously, Elizabeth Taylor sampled the buffet and choked on a chicken bone and had to be rushed to hospital.

A lovely read for a cold winter.

Prodigal Summer

Whether she is portraying cereus the night-blooming cactus flower in The Bean Trees or the stupefying heat and exuberance of the African Congo in The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver writes fine literary fiction. I’ve just read Prodigal Summer and fallen in love with the Appalachian landscape of lunar moths and coyotes and wild honeysuckle. Adriana Trigiani’s lovable Big Stone Gap series was set in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia and I think The Hunger Games, too.

Like The Poisonwood Bible, the narrative switches between three characters in Prodigal Summer - newly-widowed Lusa, touchy forest ranger Deanna and Garnett an octogenarian engaged in permanent warfare with his neighbour. Kingsolver wears her extensive knowledge of the wildlife of the mountains and the hardships faced by the rural community lightly and builds a satisfying story with high comedy in a particular incident with a snapping turtle!

 

Deanna doesn’t like people very much and prefers to live in a remote forest cabin tracking the coyotes that are re-populating the area. She does rather like the handsome hunter she runs across and their passionate relationship is echoed by the overblown summer. My favourite character though is former entomologist, Lusa, who is left to put her academic knowledge to practical use on the rural farm she inherits after her husband’s death. It is hinted that her marriage was not entirely happy and Lusa has to face hostility from some of her husband’s sisters while occasionally fending off amorous attentions from some of her husband’s male relatives. The chapters featuring Lusa are called ‘Moth Love’ and her passion for moths is beautifully portrayed.

An Io moth rested on the screen, her second-favourite moth, whose surprising underwings were the same pinkish-gold as her hair.

 It think I may have a prodigal summer of my own with a pile of Kingsolver novels and hopefully some warm weather to sit in the garden!