Closing Speed: The Unabridged Edition

A violent Christmas Eve nor’easter is raging out the windows on Long Island Sound. Nick Thorne, alone and going through an ugly divorce, feels his life coming apart. In despair, his eye catches the New York Times obituary of a Grand Prix World Champion he knew in Europe many years before. Instantly, his mind rushes back to that brilliant, forbidden European spring. Every bad choice he has made since, his doomed marriage included, proceeds from wounds he suffered that cruel season.

But Thorne sees more. This violent Christmas Eve he must go back at last and reexamine his part in that European spring, its brilliance and tragedy. Immortalized in Steve McQueen’s riveting movie Le Mans, 1970 was the fastest, most fiercely competitive year in endurance-racing history—Porsche versus Ferrari. Thorne, a youthful journalist of 27, was at its heart, covering Monza, the Targa Florio, Monaco, Spa, the Nürburgring, its greatest races. He came to know World Champions, fast-rising stars and the beautiful women who shared their bitterly at-risk lives. He came to know as well the brutalizing pressures they endured—pressures that finally ensnared him too, leading to heartbreaking loss that darkened his life ever after.

Closing Speed – The Unabridged Edition restores the acclaimed novel to its present-day narrative, the 1970 racing story told in flashbacks as originally intended by the author. It describes how past trauma, faced truthfully, may light the path to new and profound affirmation.