The Vestal Virgin Room

C.W. Smith’s hit novel The Vestal Virgin Room is a tragi-comic love story about a married couple and the agonies and ecstasies of being hitched through thick and thin. Don and Dottie Baxter are a husband-and-wife musical duo (both sing while she’s at the piano and he’s on drums) who’ve never made the big-time, but as the novel opens, they’re about to get their shot playing the intermissions at a Vegas lounge called The Vestal Virgin Room. They hope their tunes and their comedy routines will lift them out of their ordinary lives – and away from their sorrows after having lost their only child through a household accident. Sexy and sad, the book tracks their progress during a Christmas season as they play their way from their home in St. Louis to Vegas, stopping along the route as they endure dreadful gigs at hotel-motel cocktail lounges in mid-town America, entertaining regional conventions of drunk hydrologists and John Deere sales people. But their child’s death presses on them day by day, and the separate emotional paths each takes to cope with grief bring their conflict to a head when they get their One Big Chance to ooch up a rung on the ladder of fame and fortune. “Smith’s affection for these simple people is contagious and wholly believable. That Don and Dottie manage to ride out the turbulence in their marriage and emerge as survivors makes this a lovely and tender book.” Publishers Weekly

C.W. Smith’s hit novel The Vestal Virgin Room, now available in ebook formats, is a tragi-comic love story about a married couple and the agonies and ecstasies of being hitched through thick and thin. Don and Dottie Baxter are a husband-and-wife musical duo (both sing while she’s at the piano and he’s on drums) who’ve never made the big-time, but as the novel opens, they’re about to get their shot playing the intermissions at a Vegas lounge called The Vestal Virgin Room. They hope their tunes and their comedy routines will lift them out of their ordinary lives – and away from their sorrows after having lost their only child through a household accident. Sexy and sad, the book tracks their progress during a Christmas season as they play their way from their home in St. Louis to Vegas, stopping along the route as they endure dreadful gigs at hotel-motel cocktail lounges in mid-town America, entertaining regional conventions of drunk hydrologists and John Deere sales people. But their child’s death presses on them day by day, and the separate emotional paths each takes to cope with grief bring their conflict to a head when they get their One Big Chance to ooch up a rung on the ladder of fame and fortune. “Smith’s affection for these simple people is contagious and wholly believable. That Don and Dottie manage to ride out the turbulence in their marriage and emerge as survivors makes this a lovely and tender book.” Publishers Weekly

C.W. Smith is the author of nine novels, a collection of short stories, and a memoir. Aside from a long career in teaching, he has worked as a musician, a newspaper reporter, an oil field roustabout, a paper delivery boy, frame carpenter, and roofer. When he's not teaching and writing and reading, he likes to be in his kayak or on his bike accompanied by his wife, Marcia. He has twice received the Jesse H. Jones Novel Award from the Texas Institute of Letters; the Southwestern Library Association Award for Best Novel; the Dobie-Paisano Creative Writing Fellowship from the University of Texas; National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships in 1976 and 1990; the Texas Headliner's Feature Story award; the Frank O'Connor Memorial Short Story Award from Quartet magazine; the John H. McGinnis Short Story Award from Southwest Review; a Pushcart Prize Nomination from Southwest Review; Special Merit Award for Feature Writing from the Penney-Missouri Foundation; the Stanley Walker Award for Journalism from the Texas Institute of Letters, an SMU Research-Travel Grant, and an award for Best Nonfiction Book by a Texan in 1987 from the Southwestern Booksellers Association, and an award for Outstanding Book of the Southwest from the Border Regional Library Association. The Texas Institute of Letters named him a Lon Tinkle Fellow for "sustained excellence in a career," and gave him the Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story of 2009. He belongs to PEN, The Authors Guild, Writer's Guild of America West, and the Texas Institute of Letters. The author may be contacted through his Facebook page or his website: https://www.facebook.com/CWSmiththeauthor http://cwsmiththeauthor.com