Fast Women: The Legendary Ladies of Racing

In the early fifties, a hot new lineup of foreign cars arrived on the American scene -- Porsche, Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, MG, Aston-Martin -- bringing with it a new era of race car competition that would entice not only men but women. Fast Women is the story of exceptional women who competed against the best of the men, asserting themselves in the risky, macho, and highly competitive sport of auto racing. From New York to California, these fiery women burned rubber.

Among this group of daring women was lady of leisure Evelyn Mull. Mull got her start in auto racing after accompanying her husband to a race, then impulsively deciding to enter herself. She quickly became a leading driver on the amateur circuit in the late 1950s.

Unlike Evelyn, Denise McCluggage didnt come from old money. Covering the sport for the New York Herald Tribune, she was a sportswoman with the temperament of an artist. In her Greenwich Village neighborhood, there were two rare MG-TCs on the block: hers and the one belonging to a struggling young actor named Steve McQueen. It was inevitable that the two would meet and engage in a brief romance and an even longer friendship. In 1957, Denise began rivaling Evelyn for the top spot among women drivers.

Fast Women brings to life a group of intrepid women from the beginning of the sport to its heyday in the fifties in a narrative that possesses the dramatic velocity of great fiction.