The first openly trans person elected to a U.S. state legislature discusses her lonely and closeted childhood and how she re-wrote her own future by deciding to run for office.

A transgender former frontwoman for a metal band and a political newcomer, Roem made headlines when she unseated Virginia's most notoriously anti-LGBTQ 26-year incumbent Bob Marshall as state delegate. To do so she had to change her vision of what was possible in her own life: during her campaign she hired an opposition researcher to dredge up every story from her past that her opponent might seize on to paint her negatively. In dismantling all the stories her opponents tried to hedge against her, Roem shows how she was able to embrace the low points, and even transform them into her greatest strengths. From her lonely, closeted, and at times tragic childhood to her position as a rising star in a party she's helped forever change Roem shows it is possible to set fire to the stories you don't want to be in anymore, and rewrite your own future. -- adapted from jacket