Goodnight Irene

Irene Shelton was from a rural South Carolina island. Her family moved to Charlotte when she was in High School at a time when “fitting in” and “peer pressure” are what controls the lives of all teenagers. Irene was beautiful, smart, artsy, opinionated, outspoken and very poor – and she didn’t fit in at her new school, in fact, she stood out like a sore thumb! Almost from her first day at school she was bullied and mistreated by the rich kids that made up the cruelest, most feared clique in the school – the snob club - and in this true accounting of these events – names changed to protect the guilty – she is rescued by the most unexpected person imaginable – another one of their victims. Irene manages to get through all of this with the help of her best friend Jen – the narrator of her story.Irene, who is an excellent student with top grades, has made a secret pact for relief with her snob club tormentors that backfires. She finds herself in a position where if she reveals what she is doing it could impact her ability to get a college scholarship – the only hope she has to break the cycle of poverty for herself. Her actions could be classified as criminal, or so she was told, so she is trapped in a continuous round of servitude to the snob club until her dramatic rescue.Irene’s story takes place in the 1960s and those troubled times are a factor in her story. From the emergence of the baby boomers as a “force of nature” in the United States, through the death of a beloved President, the Vietnam War and after, Irene’s life events reflect what was going on around her. But the story is not about the times – though they are always in evidence – it’s about Irene’s life that begins to go off the tracks at one point and how she recovers.