'Peace Mom' Cindy Sheehan to Release Book on Wednesday

War protestor Cindy Sheehan's first book, Not Another Mother's Child, is due out this Wednesday. The book, published by the Hawaiian publisher Koa Books, is based on journal entries, letters and speeches Sheehan gave while keeping vigil outside George W. Bush's vacation home in Texas this past August.

Sheehan's oldest son, 24-year-old Casey, died in Iraq last year, and Sheehan rose to public attention this summer, when she set up camp outside President Bush's Crawford ranch, insisting that she would not leave until the vacationing president returned to Washington or agreed to meet with her (Sheehan had had one prior meeting with the president, shortly after Casey's death). The president refused, and Sheehan soon became the epicenter of a gathering protest movement, living out of a tent city called "Camp Casey." Story continues below ?

"I never wrote anything more than a note to excuse my kids from school before Casey was killed," Sheehan told the Associated Press. "So to see something I wrote in print with my name on it is amazing."

Sheehan chose tiny Koa Books?rather than a larger publishing house?because she wanted to see the book published as quickly as possible. According to the AP, Koa has put out a first print run of 20,000.

In an excerpt from the book, Sheehan writes, "I will . . . never forget the day when we buried my sweet boy, my oldest son. If I live to be a very old lady and forget everything else, I will never forget when the general handed me the folded flag that had lain on Casey's coffin, as his brother and sisters, standing behind me, sobbed?If and when I do meet with the president, it will be for all of the Gold Star Families for Peace who lost children in this war, for all of the mothers and fathers and husbands and wives who are grieving and who want to tell the president to end this devastating war. No one else?not one more mom?should have to lose her son in Iraq."