The story of a patriot who dreamed of serving her country-but who was nearly destroyed by it. Reality Winner was a twenty-five-year-old translator for the NSA when she saw a document that she assumed would make headlines: After public silence by the NSA and blatant lies by the Trump administration, the 2016 US election was far from secure. She impulsively printed the document-a breach of NSA protocol-stuffed it into her stockings, left the building, and mailed it to The Intercept, which promptly informed the NSA. Now, for the first time-after two films and a Broadway play about her-Winner tells her own story: her unusual childhood, which led her to want to serve her country; her reasons for leaking the document; and her torturous years in prison, where she served the longest prison sentence ever for a government-affiliated employee convicted on a single count of leaking classified information to an American news outlet. This is a bold, brave book about the risk one woman took to protect her country and the price she paid for it. A brilliant linguist, devout patriot, voracious reader, and fitness and yoga enthusiast, Reality Winner was a US Air Force veteran working at the NSA when she leaked a classified document containing revelations about the 2016 US presidential election. Today she is a CrossFit coach living in South Texas and studying to become a licensed veterinary technologist.
"Now released from prison, former NSA linguist Reality Winner becomes all the more compelling with narrator Rachel Perry's measured performance. Perry captures Winner's earnest desire to be a patriot serving her country. It was Winner's passion for learning languages that led to her being awarded an Air Force Commendation Medal, though those actions gave her PTSD in the process. She describes her impulse to anonymously leak a five-page classified document revealing evidence that Russia had indeed interfered with the 2016 election. The many emotions Winner experienced from the ensuing fallout, including the pain of a one-sided trial (she could not speak on her own behalf), the horrors experienced while imprisoned, and the challenge of putting her shattered life back together, are all empathetically delivered by Perry. S.D.B. � AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine"
