Trans-Sister Radio - Chris Bohjalian

I've been a big fan of Chris Bohjalian ever since I read Midwives back in college. I've also enjoyed The Law of Similars and most recently The Buffalo Soldiers. He tends to write stories about choices - and how the choices people make and the principles they choose to live their lives by, affect not only them, but the people around them. Trans-sister Radio is a story about Allison, a straight divorced single-mother who teaches sixth grade. Her daughter Carly is about to leave for college, and her ex-husband, Will, runs the local public radio station and is experiecing a little marital trouble. Allison meets and falls in love with Dana, a male professor in town. The "problem" is that Dana is a woman merely stuck in a man's body, and when she falls in love with Allison, she is only months away from her transsexual operation to become the person on the outside that she has always been on the inside. As Allison struggles with whether she can love Dana once the operation is complete, the town parents pressure her to resign from the job she loves. The story is told in chapters from the perspective of the different characters: Allison, Dana, Carly, and Will. From the afterword, it sounds as if Bohjalian did research for this book and spoke to numerous transsexuals. Obviously, not all of their experiences are the same, but I remain curious about how true to reality in general the book was. As can be imagined, there is significant portrayal of the prejudices encountered by both Allison and Dana, and I found those parts of the book infuriating and very difficult to read (though nothing compared to how difficult it would be in real life to endure). The ending was implausible and a little disappointing given how seemingly realistic the book had been up to that point. But, overall, I thought this was a beautiful book about how we fall in love and how important it is, even through very long journeys, to find our way to our true identities.