It's been eight years since town pharmacist and longtime spinster Ave Maria Mulligan married coal miner Jack MacChesney.

With her newfound belief in love and its possibilities, Ave Maria has made a life for herself and her growing family, hoping that her fearless leap into commitment will make happiness stay. What she hasn't counted on is that fate and the ghosts of the past will come to haunt her and, eventually, test the love she has for her husband. The mountain walls that have always protected her cannot spare Ave Maria the life lessons she must learn.

Big Cherry Holler is the story of a marriage, revealing the deep secrets, the power struggle, the betrayal and the unmet expectations that exist between a man and wife. But it is also the story of a community that must reinvent itself as it comes to grips with the decline of the coal-mining industry, and of an extended family, the people of Big Stone Gap, who are there for one another, especially when times are tough.

Brimming with humour, wisdom, honesty, and the drama and local colour of mountain life from Virginia to Italy, Big Cherry Holler is a deeply felt, brilliantly evoked story of two lovers who have lost their way, and their struggle to find each other again.