Fast Freddie, The Legend in a Shell, is a 32 page picture book that includes a fictional western legend followed by illustrated facts about the plants, animals and landscape of the Sonoran Desert. It is the story of Federico, is a desert tortoise who decides that he does not want to live a slow and boring existence. Longing to explore his home in the Sonoran Desert, he does what no other tortoise as ever dared to do... He stands up and runs away. Able to run at incredible speeds, Fast Freddie, as he becomes known, encounters and befriends many of the residents of the desert and has wonderful adventures along the way. Once he has seen and done everything he wanted to do, he races toward the setting sun with buckets of paint that enable him to paint the vivid colors of the Arizona Sunset across the sky.