2020 is shaping up to be a big year for Sara Evans. In addition to releasing her latest album, Copy That, which came out on Friday, May 15, Sara is also releasing her memoir, Born to Fly, in September. The 49-year-old admits she was initially hesitant to share details of her personal life, but decided she was ready to tell her stories –– including some that she has never told before.

“I chose to write about what I thought were important parts of my life,” Sara told Everything Nash. “I’ve had four near-death experiences –– very, very near death experiences, and a few of them I’ve never spoken about publicly. So one of them is in this book, which will be really, I think, fascinating, and shocking, of what happened to me.”

Sara carefully talks about her parents, how their life didn’t turn out the way they planned.

“I write a lot about my parents, and how they met,” Sara said. “I talk about my parents, and how they got married right out of high school and immediately started having kids. My mom, her only dream was just to be a farmer. And then they ended up birthing these children who were exceptionally talented at music. And so that sort of changed the trajectory of their lives. Who would have thought that my parents, coming from a town of a thousand people, getting married right out of high school, being farmers would then end up having famous children?”

Sara also opens up about the challenges she has had in her family, both with her parents’ eventual split, and her own divorce from her first husband, Craig Schelske.

“I don’t tell every little thing, but I do talk about [their divorce],” Sara said of her parents. “I talk about my difficult relationship with my dad. It’s taken four years really to write it. So a lot is different. We don’t live with all the seven kids anymore. All Jay’s kids are grown. Avery lives on his own. It’s really just me and Jay and my daughters in the home now. So that’s a lot different. Both my girls do online school. I did give a lot of parenting advice. I give a lot of advice about marriage.

“I talk about how I’m a really old-fashioned wife, and I believe in being a sweet wife and not just bitching all the time and how the mother sets the tone in the house,” she added. “And so, on one hand it’s really light, but there are a few stories that are really shocking.”

Sara Evans’ Born to Fly: A Memoir will be released on September 8. It is available for pre-order at Amazon.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Monarch Publicity / LOWFIELD