Ave Maria Mulligan has lived her whole life in Big Stone Gap, a picturesque coal-mining town nestled in the hollers of southwestern Virginia. When she's not making deliveries from her family's pharmacy to far-flung neighbors, Ave Maria directs the annual Outdoor Drama, keeps chaste company with her longtime beau Theodore (John Benjamin Hickey), and exchanges good-natured barbs with local hunk Jack MacChesney. Just as Ave Maria has resigned herself to life as the self-proclaimed town "spinster," she is caught off guard by a family secret, an unexpected marriage proposal and a once-in-a-lifetime visit to Big Stone Gap by movie legend Elizabeth Taylor. With everything she knows changing before her eyes, Ave Maria plans the adventure of a lifetime.