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    St. Dale
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    St. Dale
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    St. Dale
    Ebook429 pages5 hours

    St. Dale

    By Sharyn McCrumb

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From a New York Times–bestselling author: Strangers come together on a tour of Southern stock car speedways—“This is a bus trip you don’t want to miss” (Lee Smith).
     
    Two sisters—one reluctant, one enthusiastic—are about to take their annual vacation together, boarding a silver cruise bus for the Dale Earnhardt Memorial Pilgrimage. Among the others on the journey are Shane McKee, who wants to get married at the speedway with the legendary NASCAR racer, his personal hero, there in spirit; Terence Palmer, a New York stockbroker who has made the trip to honor his only link with the father he never knew; and the Rev. Bill Knight, whose hobby is medieval pilgrimages and who has agreed to chaperone a seriously ill child. As the bus rolls down an uncertain road, prayers will be answered, secrets will be revealed, bonds will be forged—and no one will leave this journey of self-discovery quite the same.
     
    Filled with “wonderful characters” (Richmond Times-Dispatch), this novel by the award-winning author of The Ballad of Tom Dooley and The Unquiet Grave is “a present-day, blue-collar comedy dealing with spirituality, stock cars, and shaky lives . . . one of McCrumb’s finer achievements” (The Denver Post).
     
    “Though there is plenty of stock-car minutiae scattered throughout, this isn’t a novel about Dale Earnhardt Sr.; rather, it’s about the way that regular folks sometimes use sports heroes to sustain their faith in their own ability to achieve what they want in life. In her celebrated ballad series, McCrumb uses the folkways of Appalachia to express the resiliency of the human spirit. In a very different context, she accomplishes the same goal here.” —Booklist
     
    “Chaucer meets NASCAR . . . St. Dale is just plain fun.” —The Anniston Star (Alabama)
     
    “An incredibly enjoyable read.” —Kyle Petty
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 1, 2006
    ISBN9780758267672
    Unavailable
    St. Dale
    Author

    Sharyn McCrumb

    Sharyn McCrumb is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Ballad novels. She has received numerous honors for her work, including the Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Southern Literature, the AWA Book of the Year, and Notable Books in both The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. She was also named a Virginia Woman of History for Achievement in Literature. She lives and writes in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, fewer than one hundred miles from where her family settled in 1790.

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    Reviews for St. Dale

    3.5/5

    67 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I loved this book. It's written so that a non-NASCAR-fan can follow the story, but there are also many "inside" references that hard-core NASCAR fans can pick up on and savor for an extra level of enjoyment. It also provides a thoughtful look at the whole phenomena of celebrity/sports hero worship, and the emotional role that such "heroes" (or at least perceptions of them) play in people's lives.
    • 4/5
      Thoroughly enjoyable, and if you're not a NASCAR fan, don't worry; it's not really about the racing, it's about the people and the rather odd bond that brings them together.
    • 4/5
      Wellll...it was interesting. I know a lot more about NASCAR than I did before - but it's still not all that attractive to me. (still men in cars going around in small circles!). It ended a bit abruptly - set up a lot of connections and then quit without exploring them (it would have taken at least another book, and each one is more-or-less separate, but still). It wasn't depressing, though, and after reading a couple of McCrumb's Appalachian Ballads books, that's a major improvement.
    • 5/5
      This was an awesome book!Are you a fan of Sharyn McCrumb? This is not like any of the others I have read by her.Didn't really like what you've read from her? Give this a try.A MUST READ for the Dale Earnhardt fans!I'm not a NASCAR fan at all. But this was a wonderful book.Tag along with Earnhardt fans (& those forced to accompany them) as they take a memorial trip to the race tracks that Dale tore up.
    • 4/5
      Not one of Sharon's best works, but the Earnhardt fan will probalby enjoy it.Even if you are not an Earnhardt fan, it was an amusing departure from McCrumb's usual style.A bit difficult to get through, (I'm not a racing fan) but.... it's on the re-read list.
    • 2/5
      Love Nascar, But this story and I, never clicked- Had to work, to finsh. Yet some of the other Sharyn McCrumb storys, are far better. Like She walks these hills and The Rosewood CasketHer writing style, is fantasic, I just never, cared about, what happened in St. Dale.
    • 3/5
      Excellent read and the racing is great
    • 2/5
      I am not the audience for this book. I don't enjoy NASCAR, and the book did nothing to change my mind. Our book selected this book which a Chaucer-expert faculty member understood was a modern retelling of the Canterbury Tales. He discovered the characters to be odd mixtures of Chaucer's characters--sometimes exhibiting characteristics of more than one. Of course, McCrumb's book had fewer characters on their pilgrimage, but it really disappointed. An odd assortment of characters go on a tour of the NASCAR circuit to pay tribute to the deceased Dale Earnhardt. Before they begin, one character sights Dale as he stops to help her change a tire along the side of a North Carolina road. One couple plans to marry in Bristol. A New Hampshire priest brings along a dying boy. A judge comes along with her sister. The guide was a man who lived and breathed NASCAR and had even raced a little on the circuit. I breathed a sigh of relief as we reached the conclusion. McCrumb writes about Appalachian themes, and people in Appalachia certainly love NASCAR for the most part. I'm just not one of them so my distaste for the sport extended to the book--regardless of McCrumb's ability to write.