Brenda Warner, the wife of retired NFL star quarterback Kurt Warner, wants people to know there's much more to her than being a sports celebrity's wife and living a life of privilege. "I went through so much stuff before Kurt came into my life," she discloses. "My early life laid the foundation of who I am now." She's not kidding: Warner's memoir, One Call Away: Facing the Unexpected with Resilient Faith (Thomas Nelson, Sept.) reads like a modern-day fairy tale.

When Brenda Carney Meoni first met up-and-coming college football player Kurt Warner at a country music bar in Iowa in 1993, she was a 25-year-old single mother of two living on food stamps. Her first husband had left her while she was pregnant with their second child, after he'd blinded and incapacitated their first child by accidentally dropping him on his head. Even after Brenda and Kurt became a couple, there were more trials and tribulations for both to overcome: Kurt was cut from the Green Bay Packers' training camp in 1994 and had to take a job as a grocery store stock boy working the night shift; Brenda's parents were killed when a tornado swept through their Arkansas home in 1996.

But fame and fortune followed: a year after their 1997 marriage, Kurt's career took off when he joined the St. Louis Rams and led them to victory in 1999's Super Bowl XXXIV. As with every other fairy tale, One Call Away ends with the couple living happily ever after—in a big house in Scottsdale, Ariz., together with their seven children. "I went through all the rough times for a reason," insists Warner, an evangelical Christian. "I never looked at it as a measure of how much God loves me." She hopes, she says, that by telling her story, she'll "help others get through stuff."

While Warner thinks that One Call Away will especially appeal to women, many of whom will be able to relate to some of her experiences before she married Kurt Warner, she expects that sports fans will also want to read it, to learn more about her husband. Of course, being an NFL player's wife, Warner has a unique perspective on Kurt Warner's career. Brenda Warner describes the 13 years Kurt Warner played for three NFL teams as "some interesting times." "My behind-the-scenes side of it... I think it'll shock people," she says. "I'm honest with my story."

Warner will be signing galley copies of One Call Away in the autographing area at Table 8, 9:30–10:30 a.m.