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    Big Cherry Holler
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    Big Cherry Holler
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    Big Cherry Holler
    Audiobook9 hours

    Big Cherry Holler

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    BIG CHERRY HOLLER, the extraordinary sequel to BIG STONE GAP, takes us back to the mountain life that enchanted us in Adriana Trigiani's best selling debut novel. It's been eight years since the town pharmacist and long time spinster Ave Maria Mulligan married coal miner Jack MacChesney. With her new found belief in love and its possibilities, Ave Maria makes a life for herself and her growing family, hoping that her fearless leap into commitment will make happiness stay. What she didn't count on was that fate, life, and the ghosts of the past would come to haunt her and, eventually, test the love she has for her husband. The mountain walls that have protected her all of her life can not spare Ave Maria the life lessons she must learn.

    BIG CHERRY HOLLER is the story of a marriage, revealing the deep secrets, the power struggle, the betrayal and the unmet expectations that exist between husband and wife. It is the story of a community that must reinvent itself as it comes to grips with the decline of the coal mining industry. It is the story of an extended family, the people of Big Stone Gap, who are there for one another especially when times are tough-including bookmobile librarian and sexpert Iva Lou Wade Makin, savvy businesswoman Pearl Grimes, crusty cashier Fleeta Mullins, and Rescue Squad captain Spec Broadwater, who faces the complications of his double life. Ave Maria's best friend Theodore Tipton, now band director at the University of Tennessee, continues to be her chief counselor and conscience as he reaches the pinnacle of marching band success.

    When Ave Maria takes her daughter to Italy for the summer, she meets a handsome stranger who offers her a life beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ave Maria is forced to confront what is truly important: to her, to her marriage, and to her family. Brimming with humor, wisdom, honesty, and the drama and local color of mountain life from Virginia to Italy, BIG CHERRY HOLLER is a deeply felt, brilliantly evoked story of two lovers who have lost their way and their struggle to find one another again.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 15, 2012
    ISBN9780449011539
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Big Cherry Holler

    3.5/5

    395 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Book #2 in the Big Stone Gap series. This one continues with Ave Marie's and Jack's marriage. And is he/she or isn't he/she having an affair when their marriage stalls after the death of their son Joe. Ave Maria heads over to Italy with her daughter Etta in tow, to give some space to the husband & figure out if marriage is still what they want. Lots of the town folks on both sides of the Atlantic appear in this easy to read story.
    • 3/5
      This sequel to [Big Stone Gap] continues the story of Ave Maria. It's not quite as good as the first book, but still an enjoyable and worthwhile read.
    • 3/5
      This is the second book in the series. Marginal *****SPOILER***** for the first book . Ave Maria and Jack have now been married for 8 years. They have a daughter, Ella, and lost a son 3 years ago. Jack is a coal miner, but he comes home one day to let Ave know that the mine will be shut down and he is out of a job. Put that together with the continued grief from the loss of their son, this puts an additional strain on their marriage.******END SPOILER******It was ok. Not as good as the first one, in my opinion, particularly the first half. It picked up a bit in the second half, but I was annoyed with both Jack and Ave for much of the book. I am undecided on whether or not I’ll read the 3rd book... I probably will, anyway.
    • 3/5
      An interesting plot that juxtaposes scenes in rural Virginia with those in Italy - an unlikely pairing that appears, however, to mimic the author's background. Through Ave Maria's introspection and interaction with a colorful cast of characters we follow her anguish. She calls herself a spinster because she didn't marry until she was 37. Jack Mac is from her rural hometown but very different from her. While they have a relatively comfortable life, they have some losses about which they haven't communicated. The book is about their struggle and is a somewhat predictable tear-jerker.
    • 3/5
      Read this book for my book club. When I finished the book I was glad to be done. At the time all I felt was that it was tedious. Maybe it was just that I had other books I really wanted to get into and was growing impatient. After our discussion I realized I did enjoy several of the characters. Trigiani does have a fun writing style but I still feel she could have tried to not go on so many different times about how she was feeling about her marriage. It was bordering on whining to me. We got it the first few times. This is a very real look at marriage and how we need to work at it. She had some very insightful things to share so it was not a waste of my time. My book club liked it a lot.
    • 1/5
      If you have a feminist bone in your body, certain plot points in this book will piss you off to no end. I entended not to read the third book because of this, but I ended up scanning it so the story would be finished.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Another good one from Adriana Trigiani! Reading this book it like going to a family reunion - it was great to "see" everyone again.
    • 2/5
      I have to say I was quite disappointed in the storyline of this book. Not only was it depressing, but at the end, it left you wondering about Jack Mac's side of the story. What happened between Jack and Karen Bell? Perhaps that information isn't important to Ave Maria, but its important to the reader. The only thing I enjoyed about the book was the setting - Trigiani makes the reader long for Italy.
    • 3/5
      "Big Cherry Holler" is the second in a series of three books Trigiani has written about the life and loves of Ave Maria McChesney, a woman of Italian descent living in a small Appalachian town in Virginia. "Big Stone Gap," first in the series, was marked by a warm and humorous series of sketches of the friends and family who were part of Ave Maria's life. Somehow, the second book in the series has lost much of the warmth and humor that made the first book engaging. The sketches are reduced to edgy, superficial stereotypes. Ave Maria herself is lost in self-pity throughout thesecond book. Jack Mac, her husband, who was a vital and dimensional character in the first book, barely exists in the second one. One reviewer has observed that the portion of the book which takes place in Italy is more vital than the balance of the story and I agree. It's not a bad book; merely one of those instances when a sequel fails to live up to the standard set by the author in the original work.
    • 3/5
      Not as good as Big Stone Gap.