Everybody loves a good comeback story. Whether it's Darth Vader following Luke back to the light side or Snape turning out to be way more of a good guy than we thought, we all want to see somebody come back from a tough past.

Shaka Senghor's Writing My Wrongs is exactly that kind of story. (Minus the blue lightning and wizard duels, but hey: you can't have everything.)

Before he'd turned twenty, Senghor had sold drugs, done drugs, and shot somebody. He was sentenced to decades in prison before he was old enough to rent a car. This book is the story of how he came back from that.

In fact, now he's a bestselling author and respected community leader. It's kind of like being Obi-Wan and J. K. Rowling rolled into one.

It didn't happen overnight—in fact, he spent nineteen years in prison. It took a lot of those years for Shaka Senghor to turn around the unhealthy patterns of his past and become who he wanted to be. Published by Convergent Books in 2016, Writing My Wrongs is a gripping and timely story of hope and transformation.

And it really is a great story. From Senghor's hair-raising experiences as a teenage drug dealer living on the streets to his harrowing stories of solitary confinement to his slow but super inspiring growth into the man he actually wants to be, Senghor's narrative is pretty insanely riveting.

And luckily for the reader, one of the things Senghor discovered along the way is his talent for writing, so he really knows how to tell that story. To call it a page-turner is an understatement.

Along with being a great read, this book gets at questions we all want to know the answers to. Things like:

• Can we really change, or are we stuck with the worst version of ourselves?
• What does it take to change so that your life is not about past mistakes, but about becoming the best version of yourself?
• Where do you find the strength to do that? In understanding and forgiving yourself? In relationships with other people? In spirituality?

Senghor tells his story of what transformed him. Even if your life is less dramatic than his—which, let's be honest, it probably is—you'll still be inspired by Senghor's tale. We think it has something to say to everyone about learning from past mistakes and becoming the best person you can be.

So maybe a prison memoir sounds about as far from your day-to-day life as science fiction or historical fantasy. The idea of getting locked up behind bars sounds about as realistic as getting a flying car, and everything you know about prison comes from Johnny Cash songs and Orange Is The New Black.

In other words, you're lucky and you're privileged.

But that doesn't mean that Shaka Senghor's story isn't relevant. In fact, Senghor's story and the way he explores these questions are especially relevant for Americans living in the 21st Century. In recent years, lots of Americans from really different political perspectives have started to question U.S. prison policies.

It's not just every day that you hear the same thing from Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul, but they both agreed in 2015 that the U.S. has a huge prison population—almost a quarter of people in prison anywhere are in prison here, even though the U.S. only has about 5% of the world's total population.

There are lots of complicated historical reasons for this, but the bottom line is that it seems too high to a lot of people on both liberal and conservative sides of American politics. And there's been some bipartisan work to try and change the system, but that conversation is by no means over.

In other words, America is likely to be thinking about the issues Senghor raises for a long time…and you should as well.

Because, even if words like "parole" and "plea deal" only reach your ears when you're watching a cop show in the safety of you're living room, the prison system and the men and women inside it are important to care about.