The Lawrence Hardware building (right) in Sterling overlooking the bridge to Rock Falls, Illinois.
Meet the Characters

Growing up Working Class in Sexual Awakening

Cassandra, the main character in The Rock Star’s Wife series, grows up in Sterling, IL, as a member of the working class.  Although we see Sterling in every book in the series, it is most prominent in Sexual Awakening, book one in the series.

Working class is defined by Investopedia as “persons in a social class marked by jobs that provide low pay, require limited skill, or physical labor.”  Jobs that fall into this category include food industry positions, retail positions, clerical, low-level white-collar jobs and low-skill manual labor positions.

Sterling Theater in Sterling
Sterling Theater in Sterling, Illinois, USA. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: I, IvoShandor

The majority of Cassandra’s family performs restaurant work, which puts them firmly in this socioeconomic class.  However, the family owns the restaurant and many are college educated which potentially makes them lower middle class, but the definition of lower middle class isn’t as clear.

U.S. News defines lower middle class as those earning less than $48,500 a year for a family of three.  People in this class sometimes hold degrees.

“It’s more of a feeling,” Gallup senior editor Jeffery M. Jones told U.S. News about the definition of middle class.  “It’s about economic security, being able to afford what you need but then also maybe a bit beyond the basics. Maybe vacations, something extra recreational, a third car, money to do things beyond what you need to live.”

Taking that into consideration, the Economos family is working class.  They don’t vacation.  They drive old cars and live in old houses.  Either way, the family is typical.  Collectively, the working class and lower middle class comprise 60 percent of Americans and as high as 82 percent by some estimates.

Let’s take a closer look at Sterling and the county where it is located.

Life in Sterling

An old industrial sector undergoing some demolition, near the Rock River in downtown Sterling,
An old industrial sector undergoing some demolition, near the Rock River in downtown Sterling, Illinois, USA. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: I, IvoShandor

Sterling had a population of 14,774 in 2020 with 11.4 percent below the poverty line.  The largest employers were those in manufacturing, health care and social assistance, and retail.

Current real estate values vary widely.  Real estate website Zillow lists the least expensive home for sale at $39,900 (as of January 2023) and the most expensive at $1.2 million.  According to the site, recent homes sold in Sterling had a median price of $113,000, the lowest of Whiteside County’s communities.  According to realtor.com, median home prices varied from $88,000 to $98,700 depending on whether it was on the west or east side of the city.

AreaVibes, a website that evaluates data to create a Livability Score out of 100, give the city a score of 67.

According to AreaVibes:

  • The average commute time in Sterling is 16 minutes.
  • Home prices are 55 percent lower than the national average, and rent is 32 percent lower.
  • The unemployment rate is 18 percent lower than the national average.
  • Cost of living is 11 percent lower than the rest of Illinois and 14 percent less than the national average.

But it isn’t all good news:

  • The city’s high school graduation rate is 2 percent lower than the national average, and school test scores are 42 percent lower.
  • The median income is 28 percent lower than the national average and 33 percent lower than the rest of the state.
  • The crime rate is 79 percent higher than the rest of Illinois.
  • Home values are 52 percent lower than the rest of Illinois.

Overall, the website lists Sterling as better than 44 percent of the country, ranking the city 674 in Illinois and 16,235 in the United States.

Life in Whiteside County

Rock River at Sterling, Illinois.
Rock River at Sterling, Illinois. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: I, IvoShandor

Sterling is located in Whiteside County.  The following facts are from Data USA, a website complying public U.S. government data:

  • Whiteside County had a population of 55,583 in 2020 with 9.75 percent living below the poverty line.
  • There were 23,200 households.
  • The median income was $57,172. For men, the median was $42,503 and for women it was $26,191.
  • Median property values were $107,800.
  • The five largest ethnic groups are white non-Hispanic 84.1 percent, white Hispanic 9.09 percent, mixed race Hispanic 1.97 percent, mixed race non-Hispanic 1.6 percent, and Black/African American 1.22 percent.
  • Politically, Whiteside is a swing county.
  • The highest level of education the majority of residents have completed is high school.

Details in Sexual Awakening Taken From Real Life

Brick road near Sterling, Illinois
Brick road near Sterling, Illinois, USA’s Paul W. Dillon Home, Corner of 2nd street & 11th avenue. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: I, IvoShandor

Like Cassandra, I grew up inner city in the Rust Belt.  Some touches in Sexual Awakening were taken from personal experience.  For example, the houses on her street were inspired by my grandmother’s home which was one room wide and four rooms deep.  An alley ran behind the houses on her street and the neighboring street and led to everyone’s garages.

Parts of a my city were heavily industrial, like Sterling.  I have vivid memories of black smoke billowing from smokestacks and controlled fires on the property of refineries.

Cassandra’s neighborhood is more residential than the one I grew up on.  I lived on a street with constant traffic, in sight of an intersection and within walking distance of a gas station, two bars,  and several small retail locations.  After one of the bars closed at 2 a.m., the sound of glass bottles being deposited in the dumpster could be heard from my bedroom.

Like the house Cassandra grew up in, we did not have an attached garage, a dishwasher or air conditioning.   Unlike Cassandra, we were a one-car, one-bathroom household.

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What type of community did you grow up in?  Leave a comment below.  Comments close after 90 days. For more information on the licenses mentioned on this page, visit https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/.

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Here’s the 4-1-1

Sexual Awakening by Melina Druga

This blog is a companion piece to The Rock Star’s Wife, a series about sex, family, and rock & roll.  The series has elements of chick lit, romance and erotica and is best compared to The Vagina Monologues for its frank talk of sex and its consequences.  The series follows Cassandra from her teenage years into her 40s as she navigates relationships (both romantic and platonic) — all with music playing a prominent roll.

Book one, Sexual Awakening, drops February 2023:  Teenager Cassandra Economos loves five things: Her awesome friends. Her big fat, dysfunctional, Greek family. Rock music. Her plan to move to Chicago. And Kurt Cobain.  Soon, she’ll gain another love.  Sex.  Stifled by her family’s rules, how will Cassie explore her sexuality?

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Melina Druga is a multi-genre author with a lifelong love of music, books and writing. She is the author of the Rock Star's Wife series, six historical fiction novels and nine nonfiction books. Based in the Midwest, Druga lives with her husband, daughter, black cat and CD collection.

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