At a time when the country is engaged in an intense dialogue on race relations, a recently released biography tells the story of the first African-American woman to serve as a chief justice on any state supreme court.

“Justice Leah Ward Sears: Seizing Serendipity,” published by the University of Georgia Press, is a 184-page volume by author Rebecca Shiver Davis, a criminal justice professor at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. The book tracks the Army pilot's daughter from birth in Heidelberg, Germany, through her groundbreaking work on the Fulton County Superior Court and the Georgia Supreme Court, plus her return to big law.

The biography paints a picture of a woman who made her own luck with tenacity and a drive to succeed. Sears was appointed by Gov. Zell Miller to the Georgia Supreme Court in 1992, making her the first woman and the youngest justice to serve there. She became chief justice in 2005.