Cassandra Economos, the main character in The Rock Star’s Wife series, is born and raised in Sterling, IL. Author Melina Druga used her experiences growing up in another industrial Midwest city, Canton, OH, to create the Sterling you see in the series. The fictional Sterling combines attributes from the real Sterling and Canton.
About Sterling
Located in Northwestern Illinois, Sterling had a population of somewhat more than 15,000 when Cassandra was growing up there in the 1990s. It sits on the north bank of the Rock River opposite the city of Rock Falls and is surrounded almost entirely by farmland.
The city was once nicknamed The Hardware Capital of the World and is home to many manufacturing plants, most notably Wahl Clipper Corp., Frantz Manufacturing Co., and Northwestern Steel and Wire which closed when Cassandra was 22 years old.
The city is more than 80 percent Caucasian, followed by Hispanic or Latino.
Sterling High School is real a public, high school located on Fourth Avenue in Sterling. It has a student population of around 1,000. Its mascot is the Golden Warriors, and school colors are navy and gold.
About Canton
Located in Northeastern Ohio, Canton had a population of slightly more than 84,000 when Melina was growing up there in the 1990s. It is 60 miles south of Cleveland along the Middle and West Branches of Nimishillen Creek.
The city has a history seeped in industry. Current manufacturers include TimkenSteel, Diebold, Belden Brick Co., M. K. Morse Co. and Republic Steel. It also is the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum, the First Ladies National Historic Site, and the McKinley National Memorial.
The city is more than 70 percent Caucasian, followed by African-American.
The Real Sterling High School
Cassandra and all her oversexed peers in Sexual Awakening, book one in The Rock Star’s Wife series, attend Sterling High School in Sterling, IL. This blog compares the real and fictional versions of the school.
The real school, located on 4th Avenue, is part of Sterling Public Schools. There are six schools in the district: the high school, Challand Middle School (where Cassandra met Shawna, Jen, Jennifer and Tiffany), and four elementary schools ‒ Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington. Lincoln and Washington are grades three through five while Franklin and Jefferson are pre-kindergarten through second grade. Cassandra meet Jenny at one of the elementary schools when they were in kindergarten. Enrollment is currently 3,161 students districtwide, approximately one-third at the high school.
The high school’s mascot is the Golden Warriors, and the school colors are navy and gold.
My high school had a hallway where each class’s lockers were located. I incorporated this into the fictional Sterling High School. The real school has its own version. Sterling’s freshman academy is located in a first floor hallway.
I can’t verify what the school was like in the 1990s, but it no doubt has changed over the past three decades. The real school refers to class “hours” not “periods.” There are seven class hours between 8 a.m. and 2:50 p.m., each 45 minutes long, with an eighth hour for students who need help from teachers. Students are not permitted to carry backpacks during the school day. I’m guessing this is so no weapons are brought carried into the building.
Driver’s education is a graduation requirement at the current high school. Cassandra and her siblings and cousins would have failed that class considering they weren’t permitted to get their licenses until after graduation.
Cassandra and Kelly are members of the majorette squad. The real school does not have a squad, nor does it have a debate team (which Ryan is a member). It does, however, have a speech team. There is a chess club (Ryan), a cheerleading squad (Karen) and a football team (Travis).
What Are Academics Like at Sterling High School?
What type of education would Cassandra and her peers received at Sterling High? To answer this question, I consulted multiple websites that rank schools.
U.S. News ranked the school 5,999th in the nation and 199th in Illinois in the most-recent annual Best High Schools report.
According to Public Schools Review, the school ranked in the top 50 percent of schools in Illinois for overall test scores, but the percentage of students proficient in both math and reading was lower than state average.
Niche gave the school a grade of A- and ranked it 127th out of 698 high schools in the state. The school ranked highly for academics, but poorly for STEM education where it ranked near the bottom.
Finally, Great Schools gave the school a five out of a 10. A total of 74 percent of students go onto college or vocational training, which is slightly above the state average. Participation in AP courses was 10 percent higher than the state average.
So, it looks like Cassandra and her peers would have received an average, but not an exceptional, education. Kinda puts her and Jason’s competition to see who will become valediction in perspective, doesn’t it?
Growing up Working Class
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.
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
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
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
“Like Cassandra, I grew up inner city in the Rust Belt,” Melina says. “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.”