Many of the books I've been reading lately are book club picks for the various book clubs that go on at the local libraries. I usually pick them up and read a bit and if I'm enjoying the book I'll finish it. If I find I can't get into the book, I put it down and move on to the next. This is how I found this book. It showed up on the list for book club books for this month and it looked like it might be interesting so I picked it up. Interesting, it definitely was.
Big Stong Gap is the story of Ave Maria (like the prayer), an Italian girl born and raised in the mountain mining town of Big Stone Gap, VA. Her mother was Italian married to the local pharmacist. After her father's death, Ave Maria took over the local pharmacy and took care of her mother. After her mother's passing life continued. Ave Maria is 35 and single. She tells herself she's single because she's not wanted, but the truth is she's never wanted to get married; she's always had too many other things to do.
In her effort to understand why she never connected to her father she once read a book on Chinese Face Reading and through that has come to believe that something monumental will happen to her in her 35th year. It is in that year that we discover Ave Maria, still single and now orphaned after her mother's death.
Many exciting things do happen to Ave Maria that year, she discovers that her father was not actually her father, a huge celebrity visits town and Ave Maria finds herself being proposed to by two different men. As she goes through all of this she discovers that many things she always thought she wanted, were not what she wanted after-all. It is only after she finally allows herself to see who she is that she can decide what she wants and go after it, but it may be too late.
This is a book about finding yourself, and understanding what people and place mean to you. But, mostly it's a book about learning that it's not the place where you are that makes you, but rather you make yourself.
This is one of those rare books that gets better as it goes along and when it ends you want more. It's a good thing there are sequels.
Next: The Shack
- by William P Young
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