Only once she’s established her plight as an adult does Goetsch reach back into her memories to color in her transition...This structural conceit helps Goetsch reframe her youth: We don’t first meet a boy and then a trans woman. By belatedly meeting the aloof 5-year-old who felt estranged from family, we’re armed with the necessary knowledge to better understand the author’s struggle.

By devoting so much space to her life pre-transition, Goetsch muddies the assumption that a clear delineation exists between life before transition and after. Goetsch’s journey is full of stops and starts, and it is neither as repressed nor as conclusive as we may imagine.

... moving.

Enthralling.

Exquisite.

Goetsch fashions a brilliant and tapestried story of her late-in-life gender transition.

Goetsch recalls periods and important locations in her life with rich, compelling detail, but sometimes her revelries are sprawling and unevenly paced. The prose is often lovely and emotionally affecting, as when she describes writing a painful goodbye to an ex-girlfriend’s sons after the breakup, and her insights into what it means to be trans, both on a personal and societal level, are valuable. Readers may find her blunt quips about transphobia even within the queer community sadly relevant.