Alexandra Allred - in her 'Jersey Couture' dress - signs books at the launch party in Texas. (Photo courtesy of Alexandra Allred)

Editor’s Note: Allred (and the dress) will be featured in the Season 2 premiere of ‘Jersey Couture’ on cable TV’s Oxygen – Channel 558. It debuts at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7 and repeats later in the evening.

Karin Stanton | Hawaii 24/7 Editor

While Hawaii 24/7 dips occasionally into reviewing books about the Big Island or by local authors, the only real link here is that the author was a 7th-grade classmate of mine.

So I can only ask readers to indulge me as I shamelessly plug an old friend’s new book — ‘White Trash’ by Alexandra Allred — and her appearance on the season premiere of ‘Jersey Couture.’

After a couple years in pre-Glasnost Soviet era Moscow, our families moved on and we lost touch. It was three decades before we reconnected and discovered our lives had some parallels.

We’re both writers and enjoy telling stories, no matter the audience. We’re both still into sports and women’s issues. And we both love our animals.

While I am content with community journalism, random pet-sitting gigs and a couple faded ribbons from coaching youth soccer teams, Allred’s life trajectory bounced her from the U.S. women’s bobsled team to the Austin Rage – the women’s NFL team. She’s a horsewoman and a expert dog trainer on a Dog Whisperer level. Oh, and she’s authored nearly two dozen books.

The biggest difference between us is that she has three awesome children and I have three defective cats.

Anyway, when she sent out a mass invite late last year to her book launch party, I hopped on a plane and headed to Texas. Partly because she threatened to wear a dress – for the first time since her wedding day – and I kinda wanted to see that.

I had only read about 80 pages of “White Trash” and was just getting into the story. I planned to use the red-eye flight to finish the 470-page novel, but my seat mate on the LAX-DFW leg had other ideas.

So I didn’t exactly finish before I got to the party. Good thing my old skateboarding buddy was pleased to see me and my failure never came up.

They like to say you can’t go home, but …

However, hanging out in the Allred living room that week really was like a homecoming. And I found the small town setting, characters and story in ‘White Trash’ were not so very different from my Big Island hometown.

When Thia Franks returns to her hometown of Granby, she rediscovers all that it best and worst about small towns. Lots of things haven’t changed – Chester Kennedy’s goats are still running rampant, Officer Tina Wolfe’s mouthy attitude looks likely to land her in sensitivity classes, a gun-wielding neighbor wages war with a squirrel, and the local newspaper owner unilaterally decides what residents should know.

But when a popular, ambitious black man is murdered, things do change.

Everyone is being judged and the gossip ratchets up to ear-splitting levels. As the small police department works the biggest case in Granby history, the town’s dark secrets are revealed – domestic abuse, gunrunning, drugs, illicit sex and child molestation.

Allred has a super focus on small town people and the things that make those people chatter about themselves and their neighbors. She has an excellent ear for dialogue and gives her characters great wit.

She also treats her characters with dignity, creating the most ridiculous situations in such a matter-of-fact way that you’ll sympathize with them as you are laughing at them. Especially when the goats pop up.

While it seems every resident of Granby makes a cameo appearance in the book, the main characters are well defined and are the people you’d probably want to be friends with, if you lived in Granby.

Chances are you will recognize someone in these pages, as similar characters seem to walk the streets of all small towns, from the pages of ‘White Trash’ in rural Texas to the Big Island.

To quote Hawaii 24/7 student reporter and book reviewer Finn
Gallagher: ‘You need to get this book!’

— ‘White Trash,’ as well as its sequel ‘White Tree: The Girls Are
Back!’ and other titles by Alexandra Allred, can be found at: