St. Dale

saint? Him?

Dale Earnhardt? A saint?…Well, no more so than Elvis or Princess Diana, I guess, but like them, he has mourners who continue to grieve long after the date of his death. Cars to this day bear memorial stickers on the rear window-a number 3 with wings.

Although Dale Earnhardt dropped out of the ninth grade, when he died he was ranked #40 on the Forbes List of 100 Richest Americans. Despite his wealth and fame, he continued to live a few miles from his birthplace, and to act as unpretentiously as ever. He is a twenty-first century St. Thomas a Becket: a poor boy who made good in a system stacked against him, and who retained his humility to the last.

3. But doesn’t there have to be some sort of miracle connected to a saint?

Oddly enough, there really are mystical elements to the tale of Dale Earnhardt.

Although Dale Earnhardt won the NASCAR championship seven times, the Daytona 500-the crown jewel of the sport-was always his nemesis, almost to a supernatural level. Out of twenty-three tries, Earnhardt won only once. The thing was, he didn’t lose because people outraced him. Some years he’d win every race they ran at that track, except the one that mattered.

He’d hit debris that wasn’t supposed to be there and wreck. He’d run out of gas. His engine failed. Once he hit a seagull. (A seagull?) Many of these accidents happened only a few yards from the finish line in the final lap of a 3? hour race-as if he were fated always to lose it.

His one Daytona 500 victory came when a little girl in a wheelchair visited him before the race and insisted on giving him a lucky penny to help him win. Earnhardt glued that penny to the dashboard of his number 3 car-and that day he won the Daytona 500. He lived for exactly three years and three days after that victory, and died in the 2001 Daytona 500-eleven seconds from the finish line on the last lap.

There are other miracles in the book, and I wish I could tell you the ones that happened to me while I was writing it!

4. In what sense is ST. DALE a departure from your previous books? In what ways is it consistent with them?

St. Dale is certainly a departure from the Ballad novels. But remember that I also have a smartaleck side. In tone St. Dale is reminiscent of some of my other books, most notably If I’d Killed Him When I Met Him, so I think that my readers will like it. The ones who have read it so far certainly do. This is also an opportunity to reach many new readers, who will be interested in the motor sports setting of this book without caring who I am.

The common factor between St. Dale and the Ballad novels is that I am still exploring traditions of the Appalachian mountain culture-after all, stock car racing started on Thunder Road in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. I have always battled the casual bigotry of mainstream culture against Appalachian traditions, the hillbilly stereotyping, etc. It seems to me that there is no sport more maligned by the self-appointed cultural elite than NASCAR. In this book, I treat the sport and its fans with respect and understanding-fighting the stereotypes as usual. I hope I make a difference in the general perception of motor sorts. Stock car racing is a great sport.

“My heroes have always been cowboys. And they still are, it seems.”

5. Will fans of our Ballad novels enjoy ST. DALE?

I have been pleased to see the overlap between racing fans and my readership. People I never knew were NASCAR fans have turned out to be long-time readers of my work: college librarians, booksellers, historians, teachers, poets. There are 70 million NASCAR fans. You might be amazed at the erudition and sophistication of NASCAR-fan readers, but nothing surprises me any more.

6. What was the most surprising thing you discovered as you researched this novel?

My original intention was to learn enough about stock car racing to write a credible novel. I did not expect to fall madly in love with the sport. I discovered that once racing made sense to me, I loved it. A NASCAR commercial asks: How bad have you got it? Oh, let me count the ways. Once I was stuck in the Chicago airport at race time; all the TV’s in the terminal were turned to baseball. So I called a friend on my cell phone and made her talk me through the race until my flight boarded. In June I was in England, on the computer in the basement of thousand-year-old Wroxley Abbey, checking the qualifying results for the Michigan race. My own favorite driver, 2002 Daytona 500 winner Ward Burton, had a run of bad luck in 2004. I haven’t cried this much over a guy since junior high school.

7. Did writing this book change you?

I have had so many wonderful adventures. If I have to pick just one, let me tell you about The Outlaws.

Last March I was invited to Young Harris College in the Georgia mountains to lecture on my Ballad novels. Hearing that I’d be in the area, the local high school asked if I would stay over the weekend and visit there on Monday because the high school English classes had been reading one of my Ballad novels. They put me up in a tourist cabin over the weekend. Saturday night I went dirt track racing with one of my long-time readers who turned out to be a motor sports journalist. On Sunday I settled in to watch the NASCAR race on television, only to discover that the satellite dish was out, the cabin phone was dead, and the mountains blocked the signal to my cell phone. I was in an information vacuum.

Monday morning at 9 A.M. I walked into the high school class to give my talk on Appalachian Literature to twenty-six bright and eager students-and to five Outlaws. Over in the corner sat five big tough-looking guys in black T-shirts and work boots, clearly not happy about having to listen to a lady author talk about books on a Monday morning.

I was so glad to see them!

I said to the class, “Before I start to tell you about frontier justice in Appalachia, I have a question, Who won yesterday at Darlington?”

The twenty-six eager students looked bewildered, and the Outlaws’ jaws dropped. Was I really asking what they thought I was asking? Finally the biggest, toughest one said, “Jimmie Johnson.”

I said, “Really? I thought Matt Kenseth might have pulled this one off. He qualified badly, but then he always does.”

“Naw. He got penalized for passing during a caution. Lost a lap.”

“How about Kasey Kahne?”

“Spun out. Finished thirteenth.”

After the Outlaws and I did three minutes of the racing report, I gave my lecture about The Ballad of Frankie Silver to twenty-six bright and eager students and five “disciples.” One of the Outlaws has written to me once a month ever since, and he always ends his letter with “I want to read your St. Dale book.” He’s getting the first copy.

8. What would you like to accomplish with ST. DALE?

I always want to change the world. This time I would like to rescue a wonderful sport from the casual bigotry of people who see the whole country as a theme park, and who assume that any pastime with Southern roots must be a bastion of ignorant rednecks. The drivers are smarter than you think-two of my favorites are Ryan Newman, who has a degree in engineering from Purdue, and Ward Burton, who funded a Wildlife Foundation. NASCAR fans are so numerous and geographically diverse as to defy stereotyping.

9. Will your next novel be in the vein of ST. DALE?

When the book first came out, I’d have said no, but NASCAR is very hard to get out of your system. I tried writing an historical novel and felt like I was doing a term paper on dairy products. Fortunately, just after Daytona I got a wonderful NASCAR-related idea about a pit crew, and by now I have made so many friends within the sport that I have a great deal of help in getting the details right in an insider’s look at racing.