Sarah by Kaylene Johnson

Fine Print: I bought this book for my father-in-law.

What I’m reading now: Boating for Beginners by Jeanette Winterson

Yes, our young governor already has a biography. I bought Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down at the Alaska Professional Communicators' luncheon, then at a dinner reception later that night sat across the from the governor herself. It was a surreal experience.

At the luncheon Kaylene Johnson explained how she had ten weeks (ten weeks!) to write this book, which fell into her lap after the publisher and another writer parted ways. Johnson wrote a chapter a week, followed leads she could (even when the sources added, “You know this is all off the record, right?”) and approached the book like several newspaper features strung together. Johnson won APC awards when she wrote for the Senior Voice and her journalistic voice comes out in this book which reads rather like a newspaper article, including interviews from family, friends, and Sarah Palin.

I didn’t meet Palin, more my table was next to her table at the Alaska Bar Association Convention, which I attended because Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the keynote speaker and a member of my book group invited several of us to listen.

Palin, her husband Todd and their newborn Trig slipped in after Ginsburg’s husband introduced the Justice. Palin accidentally sat in Mr. Ginsburg’s seat and there was a moment of confusion in looks and gestures: “Who are you?” “I’m the Justice’s husband.” “I’m governor.” Because neither seemed to recognize the other. Then a handler came swooping in, directing people to proper seats, all the while the diminutive Justice is preparing to enthrall a ballroom full of lawyers and a couple book group members than snuck in. Her speech was more entertaining than watching Mayor Begich and Palin eat salad, but still, an eventful day.

Which is to say nothing about the book except that she is real and in the photos and stories of the book you learn how she is real and how she is our local celebrity at the same time.

Read the first chapter online.

159 pages. Epicenter Press. $19.95.