Body
Vice President JD Vance’s new book will focus on his religious faith and his adult conversion to Catholicism, HarperCollins said, as the Republican vice president takes another step that is likely to keep him in the national political conversation beyond Washington.
HarperCollins said “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith” will be released June 16 and that it is 304 pages. The publisher also said Vance wrote the book himself, working on it off and on since 2019 and including material drawn from his time in politics.
Vance, 41, said in a statement that the book is about what he called the story of “how I regained my faith,” adding that it “only happened because I had lost it to begin with.” He also wrote that “The interesting question that hangs over this book, and over my mind, is why I ever strayed from the path,” describing it as a question about why his Christian faith of his youth “failed to properly take root.”
The announcement comes weeks after HarperCollins told The Associated Press in 2022 that Vance had set aside a planned religious memoir. The Associated Press report said some of the new book draws from that earlier project.
HarperCollins’ description of Vance’s personal and religious journey includes the timeline he has previously discussed publicly: he has said he evolved from Christianity to atheism before converting to Catholicism in 2019. He has also credited his new faith with giving him a sense of purpose, which he said he did not find through his time at Yale University or during his financial-industry career.
The timing of the book also overlaps with broader speculation about Vance’s political future. The Associated Press report said the announcement is likely to ramp up ideas that he could seek the presidency in 2028, pointing to the possibility that presidential hopefuls sometimes release books before launching campaigns, and noting that Vance has said he is not focused on a run “right now,” indicating he would wait until after the 2026 midterm elections to decide.
The Associated Press report also placed the new book in the context of Vance’s earlier writing and national profile. It said “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance’s million-selling memoir from 2016, helped make him a national figure, and that Ron Howard adapted the book into a 2020 movie starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
Vance’s religious memoir news arrived the same week as a separate announcement from his wife, Usha Vance. The Associated Press report said Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, had started a podcast called “Storytime with the Second Lady” to promote reading among children, and it said the Vances have three young children and that Usha Vance is pregnant with their fourth child, a boy due in late July.