Home to Big Stone Gap

The fourth novel in the Big Stone Gap series, set in 1998, is narrated by Ave Maria MacChesney, a pharmacist in the small Appalachian town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Ave and her husband Jack, a former coal miner turned construction worker, have just returned from their daughter Etta's wedding in Italy. Their stone house in Cracker's Neck Holler, a hollow outside Big Stone Gap, feels painfully empty. Their son Joe died of leukemia at age four, Etta has married young and settled abroad, and Ave's former Rescue Squad partner Spec Broadwater has recently died. A postcard from Ave's best friend Theodore Tipton, a New York theater director, urges her to start living for herself.

One morning, Ave spots a young man with curly brown hair at the edge of the woods who resembles Joe as he might have looked at 20. Jack searches the property and finds nothing. That same morning, Ave grows alarmed by Jack's racing heartbeat, checks his blood pressure, and reads 170/110. She insists he see a doctor. Dr. Stemple orders a stress test and lung tissue sample due to Jack's nearly 30 years of mining.

That evening, Ave finds Jack meeting with Tyler Hutchinson, a representative of Bituminous Reserves, Inc., who is pitching him a consulting role in mountaintop-removal mining, a practice that strips entire ridgelines to extract coal. Ave is fiercely opposed, but Jack is drawn to the financial security. Their disagreement becomes their longest-running argument about money and trust. They go to bed angry.

The next day, Ave receives a frantic call: Jack has collapsed at a job site. Iva Lou Wade Makin, Ave's closest friend and the county head librarian, drives her to Holston Valley Hospital in Kingsport, where doctors discover a blockage in Jack's carotid artery and operate to insert a stent. While waiting by his bed, Ave finds a small notepad among his effects. In shaky handwriting, Jack has listed four unfulfilled wishes: build a bridge, hold his first grandchild, see Scotland, and a name: Annie. Ave agonizes over each item and notices she does not appear on the list, deepening her guilt over their argument and her inattentiveness.

The surgery succeeds. During his weeks-long recovery, Jack confides that he is not afraid to die because he believes he will see Joe again. The dispute over the coal company simmers, with Jack arguing that his diminished physical capacity makes financial security more urgent.

Ave's blunt colleague Fleeta Mullins and Fleeta's longtime companion Otto Olinger marry in a standing-room-only November ceremony. Shortly after, Etta calls from Italy: Ave's 97-year-old grandmother Nonna has died peacefully. Ave begins to see Etta's marriage differently, recognizing that Etta's presence in Italy allowed her to comfort her great-grandmother at the end. Meanwhile, Jack reveals a surprise in the woods behind the house: a small footbridge he built over the creek, the first item on his hospital list.

Ave directs the community production of The Sound of Music to cope with Etta's absence. On the first snowy day of winter, a woman named Lovely Carter visits with startling news: Lovely is 40, adopted, and has traced her biological mother to Iva Lou. Iva Lou has acknowledged Lovely but refuses to reveal her father's identity. Ave is stunned that Iva Lou kept this secret, particularly because Ave herself was raised by a man who was not her biological father and did not learn the truth about her real father, Mario Barbari, until she was 35. When Ave discovers that both Fleeta and the late Spec knew about Lovely for years, her hurt deepens. She confronts Iva Lou, but the conversation turns bitter. Their friendship ruptures.

Theodore arrives for Christmas and rescues the musical when the actor playing Captain Von Trapp injures his knee at the final dress rehearsal. Theodore steps in and delivers performances that sell out every show. Meanwhile, Dr. Smiddy tells Jack and Ave that a scan reveals early signs of black lung disease from Jack's decades in the mines.

On Christmas morning, Jack presents a surprise: Ave's father Mario and his wife Giacomina have flown in from Italy, with Pete Rutledge having arranged use of a company plane for the journey. Pete, a wealthy businessman and Ave's old romantic interest, adds warmth to the holiday. At dinner, a knock at the door reveals Randy Galloway, an 18-year-old Berea College student studying indigenous herbs on the mountain. Ave recognizes him as the young man she saw in the woods in September. His resemblance to Joe is striking.

When Ave drives Pete to the airport after Christmas, Pete reveals that Jack asked him to take care of Ave and Etta if anything happened to Jack. The revelation devastates Ave, who fears Jack knows something about his health he is not sharing. During Mario's visit, he gives Ave Nonna's gold locket and gently suggests that some secrets, like Iva Lou's, are kept not from deceit but from pain.

After Mario and Giacomina depart, Theodore orchestrates a meeting between Ave and Iva Lou. Iva Lou tells her full story: at 25, she fell in love with Tommy Miklos, a Greek-American man whose parents forbade the marriage. Pregnant and alone, she gave birth to Lovely at a Catholic home and gave her up for adoption, though she checked a box allowing records to be unsealed if Lovely ever wished to find her. Ave admits she judged Iva Lou and recognizes that her anger was partly self-directed, rooted in her own tendency to hold loved ones too tightly. They reconcile.

Theodore brings news of a house-swap opportunity: a Scottish playwright and his wife wish to trade homes for six weeks while the playwright teaches at the University of Virginia's College at Wise (UVA-Wise). The house is near Aberdeen, the third item on Jack's list. Before they depart, Randy returns and challenges Tyler over lunch, arguing that the mountains' medicinal herbs are a sustainable resource worth more than short-term coal extraction.

In Scotland, Ave and Jack settle into a charming stone house and befriend their neighbor Arthur Kerr, a sharp 80-year-old widower who becomes Jack's daily companion and garden mentor. Jack looks more energized than he has in years. A genealogist at the University of Aberdeen helps trace the MacChesney name back to its original form, McGuiness, and to a family of educators. Removed from daily routines, the couple reconnects through long walks and unhurried conversation.

Jack arranges one more surprise: Etta and her husband Stefano arrive, and Etta reveals she is five months pregnant. Jack is overcome with joy, the second item on his list now within reach. The family visits Fiona McGuiness, a distant cousin in the fishing village of Pennan, who declares that Etta is carrying a boy and states that children who die always come back, gesturing toward Etta's unborn child. On their last evening, Arthur confides his great sorrow: his wife Esme was killed in a London air raid during World War II. He never remarried. His philosophy, that the only priceless legacy is having done more good than harm, resonates deeply with Jack.

Back in Cracker's Neck Holler, Jack tells Ave he is quitting the coal company, convinced by Arthur's words. Ave finally asks about the last item on the list. Jack reveals that Annie was his golden retriever when he was 10, his closest companion as an only child. She was put down while the family was visiting relatives, and Jack always wanted to bring her remains home. Ave asks whether they will use their remaining time to keep learning about each other. Jack tells her they must live in the present, trusting in change. He says she has never disappointed him, and that both their children, Etta as joy and Joe as sadness, made him a better man. All four items on his hospital list have been fulfilled or explained: The bridge is built, a grandchild is on the way, Scotland has been visited, and Annie's story has been told.