Once Around the Track [Hardcover]

Sharyn McCrumb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2007

"McCrumb draws you close, makes you care." --Los Angeles Times

Racing 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.

Rave Reviews For Sharyn McCrumb

"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

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From 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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

It's almost a giant step for womankind--an all-female NASCAR pit crew sponsored by the female equivalent of Viagra. But they still need a driver. Enter pretty boy Badger Jenkins, the poster child for passive aggression. With his polite, Southern, laid-back manner, Badger will agree to anything but never follow through. Once he puts on his fire suit, however, he morphs into the dangerously handsome, daredevil race-car driver who has stolen the hearts of females everywhere. McCrumb, who canonized NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt in her novel St. Dale (2006), imagines yet another contemporary racing legend. This book is populated with strong female characters, from the tough, competent crew chief to the determined attorney to Badger's ruthless manager. And McCrumb's detailed descriptions of the pit crew at work are so strong you can almost smell the motor oil. Readers who can't get enough of Pamela Britton's NASCAR series, including On the Edge (2006) and To the Limit (2007), will be happy to add McCrumb to their list of must-reads. Shelley Mosley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Kensington (June 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758207786
• ISBN-13: 978-0758207784
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,511,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am an award-winning Southern writer. I am probably best known for my
Appalachian "Ballad" novels, set in the North Carolina/Tennessee mountains. These books include New York Times Best Sellers She Walks These Hills and The Rosewood Casket, which deal with the issue of the vanishing wilderness, and The Ballad of Frankie Silver, the story of the first woman hanged for murder in the state of North Carolina; The Songcatcher, a genealogy in music; and Ghost Riders, an account of the Civil War in the Appalachians.

My newest novel St. Dale, the Canterbury Tales set in NASCAR, was published by Kensington Books of New York in 2005, and is currently a nominee for the Library of Virginia Literary Award in Fiction and a finalist for its People's Choice Award.

Honors include: the 2003 Award for Literature given by the
East Tennessee Historical Society; AWA Outstanding Contribution to
Appalachian Literature Award; Chaffin Award for Achievement in Southern
Literature; Plattner Award for Short Story; and AWA's Best Appalachian
Novel.

I was the first writer-in-residence at King College in Tennessee. In 2001 I
served as fiction writer-in-residence at the WICE Conference in Paris, and
in 2005 I was honored as the writer of the year at the annual literary
celebration at Emory and Henry College. (And I was the first Southern writer to take along a NASCAR driver to that literary seminar. Thank you, Ward Burton!)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sharyn McCrumb, Once Around the Track, September 29, 2007

By 

S. M. Lea - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Once Around the Track (Hardcover)

This book is quite different from McCrumb's "mountain" books and her Elizabeth MacPherson books. It is also quite different from St. Dale. She provides an inside look at the problems and costs of entering a car in NASCAR racing, as well as the interactions among various team members, in the context of a corporation entering a car with a male driver and an all-female pit crew. The book is well written and interesting, but it didn't quite seem to come to life for me. At the same time, I feel some re-readings might make me appreciate it more.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Middling Story Line, But With Her Usual Hard Work, July 1, 2008

By 

Portianay "portianay" (KY, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Once Around The Track (Paperback)

It is difficult to explain just how I feel about this one; I am not and never will be a NASCAR fan, yet I loved *St. Dale*. This one, however, left me cold. Though it is very obvious the author did her usual careful research, and that she has an overflow of knowledge on her subject, this one fell flat for me not very far into it. Even her character development is still pretty good, though she has done better; but the characters here seem very predictable, and Laraine and Christine, especially, just seem iconic, and not in a good way. So, how does a superior author develop them into believable beings? It didn't happen here. I wonder if the author got caught up in the idea of presenting the "real story" of NASCAR, so that the characters were only secondary?
Still, I always admire the fact that Sharyn McCrumb never seems to fear tackling something totally new and outside her own sphere, whatever that may be. It is hard for me to give her any fewer than five stars, but it is only fair to other readers in this case.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Love McCrumb but this one's a disappointment, June 18, 2008

By 

Margaret H "Kentucky Reader" (Kentucky) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Once Around The Track (Paperback)

Although it includes southern characters, this isn't McCrumb's typical Appalachian mountain story and I just couldn't really get into it. I liked the idea of some feisty southern women trying to make it in a male-dominated world, but the group of women who own the story's first-ever women-owned car in Nascar aren't the feisty pride of southern womanhood. Self-centered and nasty would be a more apt description of these erstwhile pageant queens. Several members of the crew were likeable, but their characters just didn't seem fully developed to me.

I admit I'm not a NASCAR fan, but a well written story doesn't require the reader to have an intimate knowledge of its characters' occupations. Overall, this didn't seem like a finished book. It felt more like research notes on NASCAR with a sprinkling of dialogue dropped in.

Don't expect the typical McCrumb mystery either. The small amount of mystery in this book gets solved in the last few pages in what seems to be an after thought.