A first-person narrative that opens at the starting line of 10,000-meter race at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics takes readers around the track and across the years in this picture book account of Billy Mills’s life and accomplishments on and off the field. Mills (Oglala Lakota) grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the Traditional Giveaway—gifts shared among the community, “thanks from people with blessings and success”—left him wondering if he would have something to give some day. Following his mother’s death, he finds comfort in running “away from the bullies who fling racist words like arrow. Away from my broken heart. Through the prairie grasses, and over the gullies and gulches, I feel connected to myself, to my family, and to the earth.” Mills attends Haskell Institute, determined to make the track team, and later the University of Kansas, where he’s reminded of his outsider status, before joining the Marines, where he’s diagnosed with borderline diabetes. “The Marines’ mantra becomes my own—Adapt and Overcome.” Billy wins gold at the Tokyo Olympics and returns to Pine Ridge a hero. In the decades since, as documented in a pictorial afterword, as well as additional end matter, he has been committed to giving back to his community. S. D. Nelson’s singular illustrations in acrylic on Masonite are a striking backdrop for Mills’s story.