An inspiring memoir by Wendy Davis, one of America's brightest political stars and hero to women’s rights supporters everywhere. In June of 2013, Texas state senator Wendy Davis became an overnight political sensation when she singlehandedly filibustered Governor Rick Perry’s sweeping anti-abortion bill. Her personal story is just as remarkable. The daughter of a single mother, Davis, at age 19, was on her way to becoming a single mother herself. She was living with her own young daughter in a trailer park while working two jobs and struggling to make ends meet. Still, she managed to attend and graduate from Texas Christian University and Harvard Law School, be elected to the Fort Worth City Council and the Texas Senate, and, in 2014, became the most serious Democrat in two decades to make a run for governor. Refreshing and forthright, Forgetting to Be Afraid is a deeply moving testament to the enduring power of the American Dream. “Very good… an important contribution not only to understanding Wendy Davis but to where we are right now.” –Rachel Maddow “I’m a Republican…but I can still love the book and be moved by an inspirational story.” –Joe Scarborough “Texas gubernatorial candidate Davis delivers a political biography that is better—in part because it’s better written, in part because it’s more heartfelt—than most books of its kind…Doubtless we’ll be hearing more from Davis. This modest memoir makes it clear why even her opponents should pay attention to her.” – Kirkus “Compelling.” –Associated Press WENDY DAVIS was the 2014 Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas. She has represented Fort Worth in the Texas Senate and previously served on the Fort Worth city council. In June 2013, she held a historic eleven-hour filibuster to block legislation that would create harsh abortion restrictions on Texas women. I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. —2 Corinthians 12:7–10 When I was a young girl, we moved quite a bit, crisscrossing the country twice before we settled in Texas for good when I was ten. Mostly we moved to follow my father—where his job took him, it took us, too—but wherever we lived, we tried to spend as much time as we could with my grandparents. We never had a lot, but what we had was what mattered most: family. My mother’s parents still lived in the panhandle of Texas in the small town of Muleshoe. My grandfather, Nealy Stovall, made his living for most of his life as a tenant farmer, and when he was in his mid-sixties, he suffered a massive stroke. From that moment forward, he lived the rest of his life in a nursing home. He was partially paralyzed, and as a result he had a very difficult time forming words. When my mom and my siblings and I would pile into my mom’s old Volkswagen hatchback to visit him in Muleshoe, we would pick him up at the nursing home and take him to be with us in his real home for the weekend, the home he had shared with my grandmother. On several of those occasions, my grandfather would beckon me into the kitchen and I would sit with him at their old Formica table—the kind with the silver band that goes all the way around. He would bring out a piece of paper, point very determinedly at it, and I knew my task—he wanted to “dictate” a letter to me so he could communicate with a friend. As you can imagine, him sitting there in his wheelchair and me with my skinny legs stuck to the plastic chairs in their kitchen on a hot summer day—it was a lot of hard work. Those hours with a pencil and paper, decoding and deciphering the words he was trying to say, were slow and difficult and challenging, not just for him but for me as well. Nothing could have been more important than the task he’d entrusted me with. So much was riding on my getting it right; so much depended on both of us working hard to do what needed to be done. Watching him struggle made me even more determined. If my grandfather had the fortitude to try to speak despite the broken pathways in his brain…well, then I could certainly do my part. Invariably on those occasions, he would start crying, which meant that I would start crying, too. It’s a very hard lesson for a ten-year-old to witness the despair on her grandfather’s face. One of my favorite photos of the two of us was taken on one of those bittersweet weekends. He’s in his wheelchair with his right arm in the gray sling he always wore after his stroke, and I’m leaning in to him on the edge of his chair with my little arm around his big shoulder. I’m smiling, and he is, too, if only just with his eyes. Of al