Once Around the Track by Sharyn McCrumb

Here’s a great summer read by one of my favorite light fiction writers.  While McCrumb doesn’t much like anyone else poking fun at her fellow Southerners, she does a great job of doing it herself! This time McCrumb takes her readers into the world of NASCAR racing and invents cup driver Badger Jenkins. Jenkins is hired on as a driver for a new race team backed by a group of rich, bored aging female investors who are mostly interested in him because of his extraordinary good looks. Their sponsor is a pharmaceutical company that produces a feminine product, and their gimmick is that the race staff, from management, engineers, mechanics, public relations, to pit crew is made up entirely of women. Each of the women on Badger’s team has a distinct reason of her own for taking this unusual career path – opportunity, adventure, being in the limelight, advancing feminism, taking a stand, getting a last chance. One just has a crush on Badger and wants to be close to him so she can keep him safe. But for the most part his team figures Badger to be an egotistical, daredevil, moneymaking machine in a firesuit – that is, until they get to know him.  Then it's hard for them to know what to make of him!

McCrumb not only develops a likeable cast of quirky, oddball characters, but throws them together in the sometimes bizarre world of NASCAR racing. She is a scrupulous researcher and you’ll learn more about NASCAR, its history, lore, politics, culture, drivers, and fans than you ever thought there was to know!  And you'll be laughing all the way.  In my book, Sharyn McCrumb is the hands-down queen of Southern humor.