Milk Glass Moon (review)

also gives in to these desires both in her youth and later in life. Not only was she seduced byJohn, she has a brief, intense affair with a man she meets on a train. Anna also has problems with organized religion. As a child, she sat on her mother's lap listening to her mother read her German Bible. "God, Anna was sure, spoke German and she would never be able to understand what he wanted." She is so opposed to the doctrines and action of the local church, that she "churches," or removes herself from the congregation. Her husband is a convenient believer. He takes the doctrine as his own when it suits his purposes. John is permitted adultery but Anna may not dance. SaZf celebrates and mourns a lost way of life, Appalachia of a century ago. These are old stories told with fresh eyes and a new voice. The author writes an elegy to a clean and wild world, but without an ounce of sentimentality. Zuber creates a harsh, beautiful, and believable world. The fact that she is a poet is evident on every page. Her narrative is stunning. It is by turns lovely and cruel, but always wonderful and satisfying. -Jane Hicks Trigiani, Adriana. Milk Glass Moon. NY: Random House, 2002. 272 pages. Hardcover $29.95. The exuberance of Adriana Trigiani's personality spills right out into the novels she writes. A woman with a big voice and a big presence when she enters a room, Trigiani instantly pulls her readers into her books, just as she does into her talks. Milk Glass Moon, the third in the Big Stone Gap trilogy, provides another great summertime read (or fall, or winter, or spring). Trigiani's book settles into our laps as comfortably as an old friend might settle at the kitchen table. In fact, for anyone who has followed this series from the beginning, the protagonist, Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney, is an old friend who appears more at home with herself and us with each passing year. We have traced Ave Maria's transformation from being Big Stone Gap's spinster pharmacist to becoming the wife ofJack MacChesney, to birthing a daughter and then a son, to suffering the wrenching loss of a child, and now to mothering a pre-teen who will turn into a young woman as we read. In this small-town setting against a Virginia mountain backdrop, MZZZc GZass Moon explores a host of contemporary mainstream themes 89 from the revelation of a gay relationship by Ave's best male friend to a struggle with breast cancer in her best female friend. Extramarital affairs and rumors of affairs thread their way through the plot, as do the satisfactions of happy marriage partners. Death, too, strikes swiftly in this close-knit community and takes one of the town's most beloved characters. In summary, the novel depicts the ordinary events of everyday life in small-town America, but in a way distinctive to this place and this time. There is a flavor of novelist Jan Karon's Mitford in the Big Stone Gap novels. Yet Trigiani sprinkles her cast of characters with considerably more salt, pepper, and Italian seasonings, especially in the interface between the Appalachians and the Italian family and friends. Each of the three books features travel to the "old country" to visit ancestral homeplaces and living relatives. In northern Italy, Bergamo, with its Citta Alta, and Schilpario, high in the Alps, are the magical destinations. In MZZZc GZass Moon a visit to Tuscany and the Olive Oil King are thrown into the mix as well. Perhaps it is indeed the blend of cultures that makes Trigiani's books so appealing. They are very Appalachian in their use of realistic dialect ("Them caramel apples are worth a molar."), real places (Appalachia, Norton, Coeburn, the Carter Fold), and authentic mountain characters (Iva Lou, Fleeta, Spec, Jack Mac). They are very Italian in their depiction of Northern Italy's beauty (Alpine Schilpario), hospitality (sharing of home, food, companionship), and industry (food preparation, the processing of olive oil). Close attention to detail shows the author's keen powers of observation and description, always laced...