Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down -- By Kaylene Johnson, Epicenter Press, 2008, 145 pages.(Sarah Palin)

This small gem of a book was written well before pro-life Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen by pro-life Sen. John McCain to be his vice presidential running mate. The Barnes & Noble clerk told me the day I purchased the book that they had just gotten copies in of Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down and that she expected "vigorous sales."

It doesn't take much expertise to surmise that until two weeks ago, Kaylene Johnson's story of Palin's stunning, against-all-odds political ascension in Alaska probably experienced only minor success. It is published by Epicenter Press, which describes itself as a "regional press publishing nonfiction books about the arts, history, environment, and diverse cultures and lifestyles of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest."

But all that changed August 29, in Dayton, Ohio, with McCain's introduction of "first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, a stunning selection of a little-known conservative newcomer who relishes fighting the establishment," as the Associated Press (AP) described it. After reading Sarah, I realized how revealing (inadvertently and otherwise) that first AP story actually was.

For example, it did not convey at all the enormous excitement Gov. Palin generated at the rally, or the instant bond the self-described "hockey mom" established. Talk about missing the obvious. Palin's charisma was almost as self-evident as her ability to speak in commonsense language that endeared her to the audience.

That's exactly the response that Palin has stirred in her years in Alaskan politics. "The more people got to know Palin, the more they like her," Johnson writes.

At the very end the AP story mentioned her husband, Todd Palin, who is "part Yup'ik Eskimo" and "a blue-collar North Slope oil worker." What Johnson's book teaches us is that the Palins are an extended family without whose total support Sarah Palin could never had ventured out to do battle with the "good old boy" network in Alaska.

Johnson quotes a family friend who said of Sarah that she "is a tireless campaigner," adding, "Todd would make a lap around the state in twenty-four hours just to put up signs." But Todd and the larger family did more than put up signs.