Ave Maria Mulligan leads a carefully ordered life in the little town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Surrounded by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ave Maria seems oblivious as she performs her duties as pharmacist, member of the Rescue Squad, and director of the local historical pageant. Her beloved mother has just died and has left her a letter telling her some family secrets which shake up her well-ordered world. Without her mother to ground her, she begins looking for new meaning in her life and decides that she needs to travel to Italy to meet the relatives she's never known. There are two men who are interested in her, but she decides that she needs to keep one as a best friend and ignore the attentions of the other one. This is the story of a woman who comes of age at thirty-five and who finds what she has really been searching for all of her life. The small-town characters are reminiscent of Fannie Flagg's characters and are delightful. This is recommended reading!