Among the runners of C. C. Pyles First Annual International Transcontinental Foot Race were an assortment of underdogs, including twenty-year-old Oklahoman and part Cherokee Andy Payne, who wanted to win over the girl of his dreams and pay off the mortgage on his familys farm; Paul "Hardrock" Simpson, who was in over his head but couldnt let down his North Carolina hometown; Mike Kelly, a luckless boxer from Indiana; Seattles Ed Gardner, one of four black runners who encountered bigotry; Charles Hart, a sixty-three-year-old Englishman hoping his best days werent behind him; and Frank Johnson, a middle-aged husband, father, and steelworker from St. Louis who broke away from him humdrum life and dared to do something different.Newspaper and magazine journalist Geoff Williams details this historic event and the colorful cast of characters involved, based on firsthand accounts of those who were there and interviews from many living descendants. C. C. Pyles Amazing Foot Race is a classic American story so astonishing and surreal that you have to hear it to believe it.