Fast Girls: a Novel of the 1936 Women's Olympic Team by Elise Hooper

Fast Girls traces the lives of three female track and field Olympians in the 1920's and 30's. There's Chicagoan Betty Robinson, country girl Helen Stephens, and Louise Stokes, an African-American from Ohio. Filled with lots of personal details about their everyday lives, as well as the politics and social realities surrounding three Olympic games during a volatile period in world history, the novel is an engrossing read which makes the reader want to delve more into the lives of these three women (but don't start researching until you've finished the book).