Jenna Bush, one of Austin's native daughters and progeny of our current president, wrote a book.

We'll pause here for the knee-jerk snickering, eye-rolling, jokes, and so on.

Ok. Now let's move on with an open mind and not judge her by the sins of the father, but instead by her own merits.

Jenna's book, Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope, is based on her experiences interning for UNICEF. It's the true story of a 17-year-old, HIV-positive single mother in Central America, whose parents died of AIDS when she was very young and who was subsequently raised by abusive relatives.

The book, says Jenna, is meant to "educate and inspire" its teenage audience. It comes illustrated with photographs by Mia Baxter, a fellow UT alum and friend of Jenna's. Jenna will not profit financially from this book; all of her earnings will be donated to UNICEF.

Jenna Bush presents Ana's Story
Wednesday, October 17th
BookPeople
7pm

Images from Harper Collins. Note: In an unfortunate move straight out of the Karl Rove Handbook on Public Relations, Jenna's publicist has announced that she won't be taking any questions from tonight's audience.

Ana's Story deals with sexuality in a pretty frank manner, and certainly doesn't hold strong to the abstinence-only policy her father has been so fond of. The advanced reader's copy of the book we received includes tips (other than abstinence) on how teens can protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and other STDs. It also includes somewhat ambiguous sentiments like this one:

"Whether or not you choose to wait until you're married or older to become sexually active, give yourself as much time as you need to make a well thought-out and mature decision."

Trying to ignore our (healthy) sense of skepticism and cynicism, we found the book fairly well written (as far as teen books go) though occasionally didactic and awkward in places. There's no ghost writer listed—most likely there wasn't one—but it's competent and communicates its message clearly.