Perseverance, love, courage and determination are just a few attributes that have been used to describe the latest track and field novel to hit the shelves, All In Stride.
The book shares the story of runners Elvin Kibet and Shadrack Kipchirchir, and the couple’s journey from Kenya to becoming American citizens, and the trials and tribulations that they faced along the way. The story was told and written by Johanna Garton, who spent a great deal of time around Kibet and Kipchirchir in order to bring the project to life.
The book has been a hit among the masses, with legends of the sport such as Deena Kastor giving ringing endorsements, calling the book a “powerfully written account of pursuing the American Dream,” and three-time Olympian Shannon Rowbury proclaiming that “the world needs more stories like this one.”
Garton, who is not only a published author of a few books, but a runner as well, was a recent guest on Lactic Acid with Dominique Smith, and shared some insight about the book as well. Here’s a bit of our conversation.
Dom: So I want to ask you this, pretty much as we start, what does this book mean to you?
Johanna: What I loved about writing the book and creating the book is that it has been just this merging of all these different pieces that I love as a reader. There’s a story about a struggle, an immigration story. There’s a story about running, which is kind of what brings us here right now, and how running essentially can change lives.
Dom: You were an immigration lawyer. Did this story hit a little differently for you just understanding the landscape of the running community, but also a deeper landscape as an immigration lawyer?
Johanna: Having been in the world of immigration for many years professionally and understanding what it really takes for immigrants to come to this country and to create new lives and also to leave behind these very powerful, important lives that they have, that was I think, from the get go, something that I wanted to explore and convey and help people understand,
Especially because I think this notion of the American Dream is kind of one that perhaps we don’t fully understand.
Dom: The one thing is, this is 253 pages of sheer brilliance. The one thing that you did a brilliant job of and it’s what we love about nonfiction writing, is character Development. I don’t want to say you develop the characters, because obviously, they’re real human beings and you’re just telling the story. But you did such a wonderful job of making them come to life. What was that process like for you as an author, when you’re writing it, while you’re sitting there trying to piece it all together and still maintain the integrity, while having us know these new characters in such a unique way that we feel like we’ve known them for all of our lives?
Johanna: That is something that I really strive to do, and that is to be able to bring readers into the story and make you feel as though you know them. And one of the things I love about writing creative nonfiction is the ability to tell a story. And to do that I obviously spent a lot of time with the three characters, there are two that are kind of the lead characters, and that is Shadrack, kitchen chair, and his wife, elven combat. So I spent a lot of time with them kind of getting to know them and getting to know their worlds and their history and their background. And then just kind of started, you know, writing and running things past them to make sure that I was getting the language right, and the things they would say in their mannerisms, all of those details, I think are really important. And help the reader really feel engaged and involved in their stories.
Dom: Is there something about each character that stood out to you personally, where you felt like you gain tidbits of wisdom, not to just make you a better person, but you want it to really express that in the book, so that others had the opportunity to learn from the things that they went through?
Johanna: With Shadrack, it was this incredible steadiness that he has. But I wanted to convey and that has always come across to me in all sorts of ways, not just in his athletic career, but in his personality and in his life and in his romance and dating of Elvin and how he kind of won her over.
And then I think in terms of Elvin, resiliency. The number of things that she has had to overcome as a young girl in Kenya, growing up in poverty as a young woman traveling to the United States, as a new black American woman, and all of the things that that has entailed and the bigotry and the racism that she’s in, had to face and then going through a pregnancy journey and coming back to racing after having her child like that’s a more recent struggle that she’s had. So being able to convey her resiliency and how that’s kind of woven its narrative through again, both her athletic career, and her life was something that I really hoped to capture with her.
Dom: Why should people buy this book?
Johanna: I think if you are a reader who loves stories about running, stories about struggles, stories about resilience, if you love to read about people falling in love, it’s definitely the story for you because it has a little bit of all of that. It’s gripping and compelling. From that perspective, I think there are lots of very good reasons for people to pick it up.
You can order the novel, All In Stride via kindle, print or audiobook on Amazon.
