good story, enjoyed the Tennessee flair with NASCAR, small towns, and religion ( )

I love auto racing, my husband is a pastor, and I usually love Sharyn McCrumb's writing, so I thought I'd like this. After all, she did such a great job bringing NASCAR to literature in St. Dale that I actually found it worthy of a re-read. But this one was a disappointment.

When a race car driver quite literally crashes a funeral as the result of a car chase, he's sentenced to teach stock-car driving to local pastors who will be competing in a race for over two million dollars as the result of a NASCAR fan's will.

The idea of a race for pastors isn't that odd to me -- for several years, I recall Jennerstown Speedway had a "Faster Pastor" race featuring local clergy (sans million-dollar purse). But this book just didn't work for me. Part of it was too much time spent explaining the basics of racing to presumably less-than-knowledgable readers. She did that much more gracefully in St. Dale and even in Once Around the Track, which I also read previously. Part of it was just that the story just didn't grab me.

I don't know if the audio format had an impact. I found it interesting that this recording was part of a series called "Southern Voices," but the narrator sounded like a Yankee to me. ( )