In many ways, there is no reason Julián Castro should have become a success. Born to unmarried parents in a poverty-stricken neighborhood of a struggling city, his prospects of escaping his circumstances seemed bleak. But he had something going for him: his mother. A former political activist, she provided the launch pad for what would become an astonishing ascent. Now, Castro tells his remarkable life story in An Unlikely Journey: Waking Up from My American Dream.

Castro attended Stanford and Harvard before entering politics at the age of 26. Soon after, he was elected mayor of San Antonio, a city he helped revitalize and transform into one of the country’s leading economies. His success in Texas propelled him onto the national stage, serving as the keynote speaker at the 2012 Democratic National Convention before being appointed secretary of housing and urban development under the Obama Administration. After being shortlisted as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he is now seen by many as a future presidential candidate.

An Unlikely Journey affirms the American dream in an age of political cynicism and serves as a transcendent tale of a resilient family. In conversation with Jonathan Allen, a national political reporter with NBC News and New York Times bestselling author. A winner of the Dirksen and Hume awards for his reporting on Congress, he was previously the Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg and the White House bureau chief for Politico. Book signing to follow.