This is How it Always Is - Laurie Frankel

After reading a couple memoirs in a row that included some exceptionally dangerous parenting, it was kind of a relief to step into This is How it Always Is with Rosie and Penn and their brood of five boys. Rosie and Penn are very different, but their marriage together works somehow. Rosie is a trauma doctor and Penn a struggling writer. Their first four boys, Roo, Ben, Orion and Rigel prepare them for their fifth son, Claude, or so they think. At age three, Claude requests to wear a dress and then clearly begins preferring traditionally girl clothes and accessories. 

Penn and Rosie, being progressive parents, indulge their child and then realize that it's possible their child is more than just interested in dressing like a girl. This leads to a probably diagnosis of gender dysphoria. And Claude officially transitions to Poppy in his kindergarten class to some general confusion but otherwise everything is going okay until Rosie treats a transgender woman who has been badly beaten at the University of Wisconsin campus. Rosie decides Wisconsin is just not the place to raise a transgender child.

The whole family moves to Seattle to try to create a better life for Poppy, but they get some things wrong, as parents are apt to do. And the whole family begins to suffer under the strain of keeping Poppy's secret. Even though they know this is a bad way to go, the secret seems to grow until there is no good way out from under it. Then some other stuff happens but I don't want to ruin all that, although Frankel's style of writing often gives you facts from the future when explaining a certain situation.

Each one of the boys in this story could probably support his own book, along with their sister, but since this story is about their sister, they take somewhat of a back seat. There's only so much one author can do within the confines of a novel.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book and the hope it provides even amidst its thornier parts. I liked that the parents are flawed and doing their best, but inside the context of unconditional love and acceptance. That so many transgender children and adults choose to take their own lives (40%) means we have a long way to go as a society.

4/5 Stars.