For anyone who wants to make political change, start a campaign, advance a cause or just stay in the fight, former Senator Dede Feldman’s memoir, Ten More Doors, charts an inspirational path. Arriving in New Mexico a stranger in 1975, Dede’s path to change takes her through alternative newspapers, adobe construction, women’s campaigns and heated grassroots politics. Door-to-door, she learns the wisdom of the street in Albuquerque’s North Valley, where matanzas and sweathouses reveal an eclectic mix of old and new, Hispanic and Anglo.

Once inside the legislature, she takes on the big issues amid conflict and corruption, developing the grit to persist in a long game that lasts beyond the Santa Fe Roundhouse. Dede’s honest—and sometimes hilarious—account of neighborhood encounters, wins and losses holds lessons for activists, journalists, aspiring candidates and ordinary citizens on the path to political change.

Her memoir—and her life—shows us how the path is never straight, and it calls on all of us to make a difference, starting at ground level, door by door.