Confessions of a Liberal

Erin Derham Van Swol had the résumé of a perfect liberal. Award-winning documentary filmmaker. A top LA agent. A New York Times write-up. So certain of the good guys that she once refused a meeting with Fox on principle. Then, on election night 2024, she and her husband Matt Van Swol sat in the dark and prayed a prayer they couldn't say out loud: Please, God, do not let our side win.

This book is the story of how they got there, and Who brought them.

Hurricane Helene tore through her mountains. The government showed up for pictures. Her neighbors showed up with chainsaws. And the media she had spent her career trying to join called her a liar for filming what her own eyes could see. Months later came the banging on her door at 2:17 a.m. Armed police, sent by a hoax call that could have gotten her family killed for telling the truth.

Confessions of a Liberal is what happens when a lifelong liberal finally listens to the full interview instead of the fifteen-second clip. It is the story of friendships lost and peace found, of a marriage quietly renovated, and of a faith that arrived through three church invitations and a horse that had no business trotting past her garden fence on the one afternoon her heart was broken open. What happened to her was not a change of politics. It was a rescue.

Written with humor, honesty, and no contempt for the people still inside, this is a memoir for the quiet majority. The ones scrolling in secret, afraid to ask an honest question out loud.