My son Jere­my is trans­gen­der. Thir­ty years ago, we wel­comed him into the world as what we thought was our daugh­ter. As a child, how­ev­er, he pre­ferred the toys and games our soci­ety views as mas­cu­line. He kept his hair short and wore boys’ cloth­ing. We called him a tomboy. That’s what he called himself.

In his twen­ties, Jere­my had surgery to remove his breasts and began tak­ing hor­mones to low­er his voice and give him a beard. My book, Once a Girl, Always a Boy, is the sto­ry of Jeremy’s dif­fi­cult yet joy­ful jour­ney. It is told from mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives. Those of the sib­lings who strug­gled to under­stand the broth­er they saw as a sis­ter, and of the par­ents who joined him in the bat­tle against dis­crim­i­na­tion, begin­ning the day his father announced to sev­en hun­dred atten­dees at an ADL din­ner that he has a trans­gen­der son, that he is proud of him, and that he loves him. This is a sto­ry of accep­tance in a world not quite ready to accept.