Work was very busy today, as is becoming the norm for Sundays. We weren’t really overwhelmed with people, but returns were very heavy and we could not scan and put things away as fast as they came in.
No new news on the computer front. We are still trying to figure out how to get the dialer program under Linux to communicate with the modem (Ron has placed holds for several more library books and we have both been reading Linux help sites online). In the meantime, I am still using Joel’s old desktop in a corner of the kitchen and trying to refrain from bitching about it. (Ron has been eying used Mac notebooks online and may well buy one RSN.)
Summer before last, just after Joel died, my mother had to have open heart surgery and I flew to Houston to visit with her before the operation and to be there when she woke up afterwards. The operation was a success and Mom is doing quite well. When I was getting ready to leave to fly back home to Seattle I perused Mom’s bookshelves for something to read on the plane and discovered Big Stone Gap, a novel about a pharmacist in a rural Virginia mountain town. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then the other day I came across this sequel while shelving in fiction.
Home To Big Stone Gap is set about 20 years after the original novel. Ave Maria is still the pharmacist at The Mutual Pharmacy, one of the few businesses remaining in downtown Big Stone Gap after Walmart opened a few years back. She has been married for 20 years to Jack MacChesney and is still best friends with Iva Lou, the town’s librarian and aging sex pot. The MacChesney’s have a grown daughter, Etta, who is married and living in Italy and had a son, Joe, who died at age four of leukemia. The plot elements this time include a falling out between Ave Maria and Iva Lou over the revelation that Iva Lou bore a daughter and gave her up for adoption before moving to Big Stone Gap thirty years ago; Ave Maria’s being drafted back into the town’s amateur theater group to direct a production of The Sound of Music, which becomes a surprise hit when visiting friend Theodore steps into the lead role to replace an injured local and Ave Maria taking Jack to Scotland for 2 months after learning of his desire to trace his ancestors and visit the old country.
As with the previous book, I thoroughly enjoyed being immersed in Ave Maria’s world for a few hours. Also, for me, the plot in these books is secondary to Ave’s observations and musings as she relates it. In looking up the books to find the links I learned that there were actually two other novels that came between the two that I have read. I will have to keep a lookout for Big Cherry Holler and Milk Glass Moon to complete the series. Recommended.
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