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A Mother's Story
by Abi Maxwell
A fiery, heartbreaking, riveting memoir that follows one New Hampshire family over the course of three years, unspooling a story of gender identity, class, trans youth, and a child caught in the riptide of America's culture wars.
Abi Maxwell grew up in rural New Hampshire, one of eight kids in a poor town abutting a wealthier lakeside village. As a young couple, Maxwell and her husband planned not to have kids, but when Maxwell became pregnant, she knew she wanted to raise her child near the mountains and lake of her youth. When her six-year-old, who was known to the world as a boy, asks to wear pink sneakers, asks to be a witch for Halloween, asks to wear a girl's dance costume, Abi worries about how their small community will react. But when that child changes her name, grows her hair long, and announces that she is a girl, a firestorm engulfs the family.
Weaving together the story of her own youth, marked by long afternoons skiing the mountains, a cottage on the lake, and a proud gay brother, but also by neglect and bullying that pushed her brother to the brink, Abi Maxwell contends with the rural America where she was raised and, years later, where she is now raising her daughter, as lawmakers nationwide push to erase the very existence of trans youth. Intimate and stirring, this book is essential reading for this moment in our history.
"Maxwell's stunning candor and brisk prose make her family's struggles feel heart-wrenchingly immediate. This is required reading." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"In an affecting memoir, novelist Maxwell recounts years of frustration, rage, and sadness as she and her husband fought for support—from schools, neighbors, and the community—for their transgender child." —Kirkus Reviews
"Stirring and fierce, righteous and right, One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman is powerfully written, elegantly constructed, and unfailingly wise. Abi Maxwell's memoir is equal parts furious and hopeful, outrageous and familiar, harrowing and heartening, timely and timeless. It is a story that pits a small town and the small minds who dominate it against the powers of mother love, familial support, and an inspiring refusal to give up or give in." —Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is
"One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman is an extraordinary story about love, selfhood, and belonging, and what parents will do to protect their child in a place that is unwilling to protect her. The answer, of course, is anything and everything, forever. There are so many families who need the righteous fury, compassion, and hope they'll find in this book." —Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
"This book is a compelling and visceral portrayal of a mother's pain, joy, hope, and heartbreak as she fights for her daughter's right to safely be herself. As a parent of a transgender child and as an advocate, I am deeply grateful for Abi Maxwell's vulnerability and honesty in sharing what too many families across the country are facing in these turbulent times. I can only hope readers allow themselves to be transformed by the humanity laid bare in these pages for the sake of generations to come." —Jamie Bruesehoff, author of Raising Kids Beyond the Binary
This information about One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Abi Maxwell is the author of the novels Lake People and The Den. After graduating from the writing program at the University of Montana, she spent many years working in public libraries, and she now works as a high school librarian. She is a dedicated advocate for the rights of transgender youth in her state and frequently testifies in front of the legislature on their behalf.
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