Fast Girl

June 18, 2012
High-performance driving at terrific speeds has proved the elixir to the “Mommy Mind,” as New Jersey professor of art and architecture Steffensen writes in this cheeky, voluble memoir. A busy professional, wife to her evidently wealthy and devoted high school sweetheart, Mr. B, and mother to the Divine Miss M, Steffensen was living a comfortable, complacent life in New Jersey suburbs when her husband introduced her to his addictive hobby: car racing. From her first weekend at Watkins Glen International Raceway in upstate New York to later mastery of the tortuous Summit Point Motorsports Park in West Virginia, she was hooked on the adrenaline high and the diesel fumes. Through vigorous instruction both in the classroom and in her Mini Cooper—her husband later bought her a Lotus Elise—Steffensen learned the geometry of the Line, driving in the rain, the sacred etiquette of passing, the necessity of vehicular maintenance, and how to shrug off the testicular language of the track rats. In her entertaining, tongue-in-cheek sendup of the self-help confessional, she writes of the feminist release, Zen-like concentration, and simple fun of high-performance driving, while downplaying (but still honestly addressing) the environmental toll and sheer wastefulness of this speedy sport. Agent: Barbara Braun, Barbara Braun Associates.