The book traces Frank’s emergence in the 1960s as a prodigious talent in his native Mayo, his turbulent years as a homesick scholarship athlete in East Tennessee — where he majored in English Literature and journalism as well as ‘music and moonshine’ — and his subsequent struggles with depression and alcohol. It also documents a lifelong love affair not only with athletics but also with words and includes warmly drawn portraits of the many – runners as well as writers – who along the way influenced and inspired him.