Overview
"McCrumb draws you close, makes you care." --Los Angeles TimesRacing fans have never seen anything like it--and they've seen plenty--the first all-women's team in stock-car racing history. Already a national sensation, the spotlight heats up when financial challenges force Team 86 to hire a male "wheel man."
And Badger Jenkins is a man all right--a sweet-faced Georgian who oozes aw-shucks charm off the track and unleashes blistering speed in competition. But the real Badger is a hard man to know. Just ask the women whose job it is to keep both car and driver in one piece.
From crew chief and team manager Tuggle to engine specialist Rosalind Manning, publicist Melanie Sark and diehard fan Taran Stiles, this asphalt sisterhood will power through a racing season of dizzying highs and terrifying lows to prove that women can do a man's job. And when the unthinkable happens, each will realize that they've been hurtling at breakneck speed toward a moment that will change them forever.
"McCrumb writes with a quiet fire. . .like every true storyteller, she has the Sight." --The New York Times Book Review
"There is no one quite like her among present-day writers. No one better, either." --The San Diego Union-Tribune
"McCrumb portrays people so well it makes your heart ache." --Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Bestseller McCrumb (St. Dale; Ghost Riders) returns to the world of NASCAR in this middling tale of modern celebrity. Badger Jenkins, a shy, good old boy from Marengo, Ga., whose days of racing stardom have come and gone, is recruited by a syndicate of women investors to drive their new car. The car's primary sponsor is Vagenya (sounds like Virginia), a Viagra-like product for women, and the team will field an all-female crew. Besides the inscrutable but lovable Badger, there's Grace Tuggle, the gruff crew chief; Melodie Albigre, Jenkins's predatory agent; and Melanie Sark, a duplicitous publicist who's secretly planning to write an exposé of NASCAR. Add the competing agendas to an inexperienced pit crew, and Team Vagenya seems to be headed for a pileup long before it gets to victory lane. NASCAR fans will enjoy the time spent at the track, but the pedestrian plotting and unsurprising outcome hinder the novel like sugar in a gas tank. (June)Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Library Journal
McCrumb follows the success of St. Dale, a takeoff on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales revolving around the legendary Dale Earnhardt, with another novel about NASCAR, the American sport second only to pro football. The creators of the drug Vagenya (think Viagra for women) seek to sponsor an all-female NASCAR team with an attractive male driver. Pretty-faced, good ol' boy Badger Jenkins is offered what may be his last chance racing. McCrumb gets a fast start with lots of laughs during the selection and building of the female team but then settles down to business as she focuses on Badger and crew member Taran Stiles, a serious Badger fan. Aside from Taran and Badger (a truly admirable guy), most of the other characters are rather two-dimensional, but the cult of the fan and NASCAR drivers as modern-day knights are explored in full. For public libraries with NASCAR or McCrumb fans.
—Rebecca Kelm