The Letter

tries to find perspective on her suspicion that her husband is having an affair, she is herself tempted. Although clearly more serious that its predecessor, this book includes the same zany townspeople who enliven Ave Mari's pharmacy and has a similar appeal. This series begs for comparison to the best-selling Mitford series by Jan Karon. Trigiani's characters inhabit a very different Appalachia, in the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, than Karon's who dwell in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, an enclave for the rich, near the Blue Ridge Parkway. Nevertheless, this more traditional setting is still basically used for popular, feel-good, fiction. The author grew up in Big Stone Gap, but now lives in New York, where she is making her first novel into a Hollywood movie. The Letter Brown and brittle, the note lay atop my palm. Scribed on the flip side of an old Coal Town Commissary receipt. The receipt reading: ham samwich, sodie pop, tobácea plug, and a baseball glove. Written in great haste, mostly illegible. A letter from my Papa. Coal-stained fingerprints marked the surface with smearing of pencil lead. Found floating in a slurry ditch after the shaft was unsealed. The writing rough, as if written on a rock. Papa said, "Take good care of your mother." —Brad Middleton 122 ...