This Is How It Always Is by Lauren Frankel

 

Rosie and Penn have created a lovely family.  Rosie is a doctor and Penn is a novelist although he is unpublished.  They have five boys.  Roo is the oldest, then Ben, then a pair of twin boys and then Claude.  They live in Michigan and life is good.  

When Claude is five, they ask him one day what he wants to be when he grows up.  Claude says he wants to be a girl.  Soon he is wearing dresses almost exclusively at home.  If he had his way, he would wear them to school as well but he has been discouraged from doing so.  His daily routine is to get up, put on girl clothes through breakfast, change into pants and tee shirt for school, then change back into a dress as soon as he gets home.  But he changes from a happy child to a sad one and Rosie and Penn make the big decision to move the family from Michigan to Seattle where they think the atmosphere would be more supportive to Claude, or Poppy as she wants to be known as.

The family moves.  Now Roo is the one who changes as he goes from Mr. Popular back home to someone trying to make his way with all new friends and routines as he finishes high school.  But Poppy is ecstatic. The whole family keeps her secret and no one here has ever known her as anyone but Poppy.  She has three best girlfriends and her life is wonderful.  Until one day the secret leaks out and the family's life explodes.

This is a wonderful book.  Rosie and Penn are some of the best parents I've ever seen portrayed and the love and support they give their children is amazing.  Most readers will feel that they might have come up short in the parenting department when they read about this family.  It explores secrets and how deadly they prove to be and the relationships and connections families have as they try to grow up and connect with the outside world.  It also explores the hot topic of transgender children and the high suicide rate this group is burdened with.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.