Published by Lake Union Publishing in May of 2026.
Synopsis:
10 years ago Mack Williams was the hottest driver on the midwest sprint car circuit. She was the daughter of a sprint car legend, she grew up racing on her family's small town Indiana dirt track and she was on the fast track to the IndyCar series and its ultimate race - the Indy 500.
But, she got pregnant and immedately after that her father was in a devastating accident that left him disabled for many months. Between caring for her father, her baby, and managing the dirt track, racing took a back seat and eventually was just a forgotten dream.
Then, after ten long years, one of her racing heroes, Janet Joyner, shows up at the track after a long night of races. She was a female driver at the Indy 500 when it was still a novelty and never had a chance to drive a quality ride in the race.
Joyner is now the owner of a small one car race team that has flashes of racing competitively with the bigger teams. Shas an offer for Mack Williams - she has a seat available in a second car and Mack can try to qualify for the Indy 500 in just a few weeks if she can get a sponsor.
My Review:
Up front I have to state a few facts about myself. I am an Indy 500 fan. I have gone to every 500 since 1986 (except the Covid year when no one could go). I went to qualifications and practices for years before that with my father. I have been to just about everything you can do at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - I have watched tire testing days, been to the old musem, been to the new museum, taken the bus tour around the track, and more. Once I paid $10 to drive my minivan around the track as a fundraiser for some sort of charity. I have been in a suite, I have been in the scoring tower, and I have been in the garage area when it was full of cars being worked on.
I got The Last Sunday in May for free as a part of Amazon Prime and was fully expecting to laugh it off of my Kindle app. The cover conveyed the idea that it was going to be about a female driver, but it didn't inspire much confidence.
Instead, I found it to be an unlikely story, but one that could happen. The Indy 500 is full of unlikely stories. I saw Al Unser, Sr. win the Indy 500 in 1987. He didn't have a ride when he arrived and the car was part of a display in a hotel in Pennsylvania when his deal was signed. I saw Billy Boat qualify a rebuilt Frankenstein of a car at the last second to make the Indy 500. In the 2026 Indy 500 a small team beat the historically best Indy 500 team of all time by a time of 0.0233 seconds - they were literally side by side.
I've seen championship teams struggle to make the field and little teams do well. I've seen front row starters wreck before the race even started and last row starters be contenders. Oddly, the front row wrecks are more common than people coming up from the last row to be contenders.
The Janet Joyner character is an amalgamation of Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James, and Sarah Fisher. Fisher had a small team and could spot talent - she gave two-time Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden his first ride in IndyCar. As of this writing, he has won a total of 34 IndyCar races - she was right to take a chance on him. Lyn St. James was very much interested in expanding opportunities for women in racing. Janet Guthrie could build a car from scratch, if she needed to.Danica Patrick in the 2006 Indy 500.
There are a couple of questionable moments of geography that stuck out to this Indy westsider, but only a couple.
The book likes to introduce new chapters with emails or social media comments from fans about Mack Williams. Some readers might find those to have been unrealistically harsh. I found them to be on the mild side. I have seen completely horrific comments about female and minority race car drivers on all sorts of social media and in the comments sections on racing fan pages. Sexually graphic comments are not uncommon.
It's not just from men. I got into a long argument on a Facebook article about Katherine Legge's performance in the 2026 Indy 500. She finished last in the 500, and a middle-aged woman was basically saying women should stay out of the race. She hadn't seen the race and she didn't know that Legge wrecked her car to avoid t-boning a male driver (a former 500 winner) who had lost control of his car on lap 18 right in front of her.
To sum up, I enjoyed this book. There was too much romance novel for my taste, but the book kept me reading and wanting to know what happened next. The Indy 500 stuff is improbable, but not impossible. I've seen the highly improbable happen before at the Indy 500 and I will undoubtedly see it happen again.
Does she win? I would never tell what happened in a race - that ruins the anticipation of a race!
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Last Sunday in May by Kate Clark Stone.
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