First published 2008
Dan Patch enters the world unable to stand, nearly put down before he can take his first steps. The crippled colt pulls a grocer's wagon through Oxford, Indiana until someone enters him in a county fair race. He wins that first race and never stops winning. Dan becomes America's most famous athlete, a pacer who shatters the world mile record by four seconds. He earns over a million dollars while baseball's Ty Cobb makes twelve thousand. Dan nods to crowds and poses for cameras, his name selling breakfast cereals and washing machines across the country. But harness racing runs on corruption. Drivers fix races with drugged horses and ringers. Hustlers intimidate Dan's original owner into selling. Dan spends his final years touring in a private railroad car, performing speed exhibitions for crowds of 100,000. When automobiles replace horses in American hearts, Dan dies forgotten in 1916, buried in an unmarked grave by his bankrupt owner.
Genres: biography, historical-fiction, 20th-century, american, sports, american-history
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall
Setting: Indiana, Oxford
Period: 1916
359 pages · Kindle Edition · Simon Schuster