Daredevil at the Wheel: The Climb and Crash of Joan LaCosta

"An essential contribution to women’s sports history and car racing collections." —Booklist, Starred Review

On Fourth of July weekend in 1924, Marion Martins flies past some of the best race car drivers of her time and takes home two trophies from the famous North Shore racetrack in Chicago. In 1926, on the beaches of Daytona, Florida, Joan LaCosta breaks a world speed record at 145 miles per hour. But Martins and LaCosta never face one another on the close-knit circuit of early American auto racing. That’s because they are just two of the identities adopted by the elusive woman born Marion Carver. By the late 1920s, this enigmatic woman became a household name in auto racing—several household names in fact—though she’d be best known as Joan LaCosta.

Adopting and discarding personas almost as often as she changes tires, LaCosta defies death, shuns social norms, and keeps her competition in the rearview mirror. While driving as fast as she can away from a complicated past, she survives violent wrecks, race collisions, and onboard fires in front of sell-out crowds. But fame, danger, and failed relationships take their toll.

In 1929, as the Great Depression looms, LaCosta, broke and broken, commits to one last daring stunt: the attempted robbery of a Chicago high-society matron in the city’s most glamorous high rise. Coverage of the dramatic trial sells out papers from coast to coast, and after fame turns to infamy, LaCosta sheds her identity one last time and disappears from public view.