Before the Light is a true story of survival that unfolds with the intensity of a life lived too fast.

Growing up with nothing. Wearing hand-me-downs and wanting just once to feel like everyone else.. It started with stealing. Small things at first, then bigger risks. Getting caught changed everything. Probation. Alternative school. A place that didn't teach lessons from books, but taught how to read people, move smart, and survive. It was there Kaleigh grace unknowingly became something else-a thinker, a strategist, a natural-born salesperson.

At the same time, she was navigating dangerous relationships-like secretly dating a 39-year-old man as a minor, a situation that came crashing down when police surrounded the house with a helicopter, 8 cars deep and guns drawn.

Every moment builds. Every choice has weight.

At fourteen, the lines blurred completely. Her own mother funded her first quarter pound of marijuana, turning survival into business. What started small quickly escalated-selling drugs like a full-time job, hosting packed house parties under her mother's supervision, and eventually being pulled into something darker: sneaking into a clinic after hours, sorting through biohazard containers filled with needles to collect thousands of pills.

Life didn't cut her any breaks.

She left home at sixteen. By nineteen, she was pregnant-and five days before giving birth, the father of her child was killed in a motorcycle accident, forcing her into motherhood alone.

None the less every moment built her. Every decision shaped her.

Before the Light is a raw, real-life account of growing up in chaos, learning to survive it, and becoming the woman the world would later know as Paris Banks.