White Trash, Red Velvet — Donald Secreast

Set in North Carolina and echoing a rich tradition of Appalachian storytelling, Donald Secreast's second book of fiction explores with deeply felt sympathy and acute insight the delicate web of family relations, the natural cycles of growth and loss within one very appealing small-town American family.

The twelve interrelated stories in this collection illuminate the inner lives of Curtis and Adele Holsclaw and their three children while offering a vivid portrait of the small factory town in rural North Carolina where they live. Evoking pivotal scenes in the life of this blue-collar family, Secreast sketches the often disappointing and sometimes tragic paths his characters' lives follow through several decades.

The most troubled of the Holsclaw's is probably the eldest daughter, Maureen, whose love of fast cars and vain men becomes a dynamic emotional forces in the family--provoking her parents' perpetual concern, irritation from her sassy little sister, Phyllis, and quiet shock from her shy younger brother. During her final year in high school, Maureen dates the senior upholsterer at the furniture factory, Gaither Drum, whose red 57' Chevrolet Bel Air as roll-pleated Russian leather seats that make Maureen dream of stripping bare and driving all the way up to the Virginia line. In the title story, Gaither's desire to win Maureen's affection by protecting her from the threatening bully Junior McLaughlin drives him to a bizarre upholstering showdown in which he stakes the seat Maureen adores for the chance to humiliate the blustering redneck.