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Mar 05, 2017DorisWaggoner rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
This quirky story of Rosie and Penn, and their family of four sons, hoping the fifth child will finally be a daughter, goes off in all kinds of often weird, humorous, sad, and ultimately wise directions. To start with, Rosie's an ER doc, and Penn a stay at home dad writing the great American novel. Then the hoped for daughter is a fifth son. Except that when he's three, he declares that he wants to be a girl. And they let him--at home. The secret, they think, will be easy to keep, in progressive Madison, WI, and later in even more progressive Seattle. But Poppy gets outed, and it's utterly painful, so painful that Poppy punishes herself by retreating into the boy persona. Healing begins when Rosie and Poppy go to Thailand to keep the mother out of trouble at work. The clinic she works at has nothing--except love--to offer its clients. There's even a school, and they assume the child who speaks English like an expert has been sent to teach the language to the children there. Mother and child also notice that in Thailand there's a third sex, between the other two. Maybe that's a place to start for Poppy when she and her mother go home. Even though this is a trendy topic at the moment, it's beautifully written, by the mother of a trans child. Love the orange cover, too. Having lived in both settings made me like it even more.