Former governor Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," will hit bookstores tomorrow, Nov. 17. Beating its release by one day is "Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare," edited by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed and available exclusively at ORbooks.com. A collection of essays about Palin,"Going Rouge" features contributions from writers including Eve Ensler, Gloria Steinem, Tom Perrotta and Frank Rich, as well as several Alaskans: rural affairs specialist Elstun Lauesen, Mudflats blogger Jeanne Devon, and media personality Shannyn Moore. The following excerpt is "Letter from the Other Alaska," Moore's contribution to "Going Rouge."

BOOK EXCERPT: On the morning of John McCain's announcement that he had picked our governor, Sarah Palin, as his running mate, before she walked onto the national stage, Palin called in to the radio show I was on. "Today is a great day for Alaska and Alaskans," she proclaimed. "You accepted?" was my response. I couldn't believe it. There was an awkward silence. (Maybe she blinked.) But I would have said the same thing if she had been invited to do medical mission work repairing cleft palates in third world countries.

I have more in common in with Sarah Palin than most anyone I know. Raised in small-town Alaska; both parents public school teachers; local pageants, state pageant, second runner-up and Miss Congeniality, respectively; hunting; commercial fishing; and a great pride in the independence and strength in being an Alaskan woman. We both know the comfort of ExtraTuf Boots and fishing gear. Part of me was proud and part of me knew she'd traded for a whole different set of heels. Heels I'd never be comfortable in.

"I have nothin' to lose," Palin told Rush Limbaugh weeks after our radio conversation. Palin's statement was the most honest thing I'd heard her say. She had nothing to lose, and she didn't. John McCain lost. The Republican Party lost. Alaska lost. But Sarah Palin didn't lose.

Unlike Governors Clinton and Bush, Sarah wouldn't relinquish her position to Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell. Alaska state business was taken over by Storm Trooper-like forces from the McCain campaign. To this day, political shrapnel is still surfacing.

More recently, Palin said about her upcoming and heavily discounted book, "Going Rogue," "There have been so many things written and said through mainstream media that have not been accurate, and it will be nice through an unfiltered forum to get to speak truthfully about who we are and what we stand for and what Alaska is all about." Who is "we"? How could Sarah Palin possibly know what "Alaska is all about"? No one can sum this place up; that's what I love about it. We are too mavericky to have one voice define us.

But Sarah Palin stole Alaska's voice. During the campaign, "She Doesn't Speak For Me!" bumper stickers were seen more often than McCain/Palin stickers. Sarah Palin didn't speak for all Alaskans, yet our mountains, oceans, culture, and wild things became props in her campaign.

The weeks after the election/rejection of Palin were intense. Many of my friends -- those who had become like family to me -- had worked tirelessly, for no money, and managed to get the truth to the mainstream media about our governor. Yes, we declared victory on election night, but we knew she was coming home, and she wasn't happy about it. Neither were we.

As if that weren't bad enough, we'd been hearing loons talk about secession up here for years. In Alaska, the three top ballot spots -- for president, Senate and House of Representatives -- have candidates from the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. In two of the three, the AIP holds at least 4 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, the felonious Ted Stevens had convinced over a hundred thousand Alaskans what he couldn't convince twelve jurors of a few weeks before the election -- i.e., his innocence.