Doug Duperrault’s Trailer Camp Woman

Doug Duperrault’s Trailer Camp Woman (also published as Trailer-Camp Girl) is a 1959 sleaze novel belonging to the small but intriguing sub-genre of trailer park sleaze.

Doug Duperrault (1929-2005) worked in a huge variety of jobs and wrote at least twenty-four sleaze novels.

While the 50s is often thought of as a decade of unparalleled prosperity there were in fact severe housing shortages and there were plenty of people who were doing it tough. Trailer parks boomed in response. Since these were somewhat artificial slightly impermanent communities they gained a bit of a reputation for encouraging what was by 1950 standards a relatively free-wheeling attitude towards sex. The reputation may have been partly deserved - they possibly were more sexually liberated than ultra-respectable traditional small town America.

And given the 1950s obsession with sin it’s hardly surprising that publishers and writers recognised an opportunity for tales of trailer camp sexual licentiousness.

Arlene Ford lives in a trailer park with her husband Buddy. It is not a happy marriage. Buddy is quite a bit older than his very attractive young wife and he’s insecure about that and about a whole lot of other things - his inability to provide his wife with a proper house, his failure to get her pregnant after five years of marriage, his steadily increasing waistline and steadily receding hairline and his dodgy heart. Buddy is angry, jealous, possessive, bad-tempered, insensitive and intermittently violent towards Arlene. To top it all off he can’t satisfy Arlene sexually, and Arlene is a passionate woman. Despite all this Arlene has tried to make the marriage work and has never been unfaithful.

Then Arlene meets a handsome young sailor named Corey. He’s very young but he’s kind and gentle. Although he’s desperate to get into Arlene’s pants he won’t pressure her. He’s such a sweet boy that she ends up sleeping with him anyway.

Arlene also meets Agnes and Francie. They Iive in the trailer park and are reputed to be lesbians. Arlene has no idea what lesbians actually do in bed but she figures it might be fun to find out. She sleeps with both Agnes and Francie.

So suddenly the previously faithful Arlene is having three separate affairs all at once. She’s a busy girl.

She has one really big problem to worry about. Her psycho ex-fiancé John has started stalking her. She broke off the engagement with him when he tried to rape her. Now he tells her he intends to get from her what he didn’t get five years earlier. He hasn’t quite decided if he’s just going to rape her or if he’s going to kill her afterwards.

Arlene’s life has become much too complicated and there are several more twists to come.

Buddy, John and Arlene’s sleazy neighbour Hank are straightforward villains - they’re pigs or sleazebags or psychos. Agnes and Francie are quite sympathetic characters. They’ll chase anything in a skirt but they’re really nice about it.

Arlene is the most interesting character. She’s a mixture of indecisiveness and recklessness. She should have left Buddy two or three years earlier but she didn’t. We can certainly understand her motivations - a hunger for both love and sex. But having now decided to become a sexual adventuress she’s not as discreet about it as she should be.

There’s plenty of sex but not too much in the way of detailed descriptions of the acts. It’s all titillation but it’s done well enough. The essence of sleaze fiction of that era is that it’s mostly a tease - you think you’re going to get more than the book actually delivers in terms of sexual content but Duperrault builds up a nicely overheated atmosphere of sexual frustration and jealousies.

There is some suspense as the drama with psycho John heats up. There’s romance. Arlene really thinks she’s found the man she’s been looking for in Corey.

It’s well-written and well-paced and it’s pretty enjoyable if you like the sleaze genre. In fact I’ll highly recommend it.