Sterling Road Blues

The last thing Tenney Showalker expected was for life to change. By day she teaches English at Greater Richmond High for what she calls “idiots, no savants.” Her nights are not worth mentioning. Week in, week out, she is drill sergeant, psychologist, social worker and fortune teller—the only time she truly has anyone’s attention—at a school for the students who will probably wind up on the street, in jail…or worse.


Life gets more interesting when Tenney is asked to pass on her more esoteric methods to other teachers as an adjunct professor at a prestigious local university. Her high hopes are immediately dashed by resistance from all quarters, but especially young Stephen Givings, and then by university students who discover she is gay.


Madeline Wingfield, Dean of Education, steps in to reconcile the opposing sides. It’s not an assignment she relishes until meeting Tenney unfolds a whole new age of enlightenment.


The popular author of Piper’s Someday and Vera’s Still Point returns with a charming and thought-provoking story about learning and teaching from the inside out and outside in.