Cori Bush did not expect to seek for political office after working as a nurse, pastor, and community organizer in St. Louis, Missouri. However, as protests erupted in Ferguson in 2014, Bush found herself on the frontlines, giving medical care while also denouncing violence against Black life. Encouraged to run for office by community leaders, and driven by a desire to keep her children and others from becoming social media hashtags, Bush campaigned relentlessly while navigating myriad personal challenges—and eventually rose to unseat a twenty-year incumbent and become the first Black woman to represent her state in Congress. The Forerunner is a candid and compelling tale of a politician and activist whose life experiences, while underrepresented in Congress, mirror some of the same realities and hardships that many Americans confront on a daily basis. Congresswoman Bush, by courageously laying bare her experience as a minimum-wage worker, a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse, and an unhoused parent, epitomizes a new chapter in progressive politics that places the lives and stories of the most politically vulnerable at the center of its agenda. The Forerunner is a monument to the long-lasting influence of the Ferguson Uprising as well as an incisive analysis of how the American political system is so deeply entwined with systemic injustice. This is a political memoir like no other, at once a riveting and emotionally charged personal tale and a ferocious cry to action.