Overtaken

The Indianapolis 500 is an institution in our family. So much so that when my husband Steve was growing up and the 500 was always run on May 30^th, his birthday, he believed the race was run for him.

I can’t say I ever became a true race fan, but I’ve been to the 500 lots of times over the years and I always got a kick out of the hoo-ha surrounding it. We’d ride in on my husband’s Harley, weaving through traffic, hugging the berm, ducking down alleyways—every kind of music spilling from car windows. Near the Speedway, yards became parking lots, whole families on their porches for the show. The woman in whose yard we parked always spent the night before the race on a chaise lounge in her driveway, protecting her tomatoes and peonies from crazy race fans, shocked awake every single year by the Speedway High School Marching Band playing “America the Beautiful” on their way to the track.

I loved the throngs of people moving like magnets toward the Speedway gates, the rattle of ice in coolers, the smell of sunscreen, the chop-chop of circling helicopters. High in the third turn, we’d watch the Festival Queen and her court wave from open convertibles. In the infield, fans partied on blankets and lawn chairs, on car roofs, in the beds of pickup trucks until riveted when a stealth bomber appeared on the horizon, bat-like, flat as an airfield, and flied toward us with an ominous, earsplitting whoosh—gone as quickly it came. (Actually, I hated that part. It scared the crap out of me.) But onward to “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Back Home in Indiana”, the prayer (really, though, didn’t God have something better to do than worry about a bunch of maniacs driving around in a circle all day at insane speeds?). Then thousands and thousands of balloons let loose into the early summer sky.

A voice (kind of like God’s, actually): “Gentlemen Start Your engines.”

And one by one the beautiful machines sprang to life—louder, louder, until the whole world was nothing but one continuous scream.

Anyway. This post is not really about the Indy 500. It’s not even May.

It’s about the fact that my daughter Kate Shoup just published her first novel, Overtaken, set in the world of Indy Car Racing. A true Indy 500 fan, much to my husband’s delight, she married a race engineer and spends her summers traveling the Indy Car circuit with him, taking great pictures of Indy cars and their drivers.

Perks are involved! Steve gets to hang out in the garages all through May and even got to serve on a pit crew several times!

Note the official shirt.

Here’s the gist of Overtaken: When five-time Formula 1 champion and taciturn tabloid magnet Loic Chalumeau trades Monaco for the Midwest in a quest for glory at Indianapolis, everyone in the IndyCar paddock hits the limiter...except for racecar mechanic Cam Wexford. As the sister of Loic’s bitterest rival, Cam vows to steer well clear of Loic. But her attempt to remain in the dashing driver’s blind spot quickly veers off track. Soon, Cam realizes that the one man she’s so desperate to hide from is the only person who truly sees her. Will Cam pump the brakes on her growing feelings for Loic? Or can she let love overtake her?

Kate, writing with the pen name Elizabeth Oliver, is a very funny person and Overtaken will make you laugh out loud as Cam crabwalks her way into falling in love with Loic.

It’s a sweet story, too—with an ending that will make you smile.

Who doesn’t need that right now?

Overtaken launches today.

Click to find Kate’s very cool racing photos.