This Is How It Always Is

This Is How It Always Is, a novel by Laurie Frankel, was published in 2017. It was a New York Times best seller, one of People magazine’s Top 10 Books of 2017, and a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick.

Plot Summary

Dr. Rosie Walsh is pregnant with her fifth son, Claude. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her writer husband, Penn Adams, and their four boys. At the beginning of the book, Rosie reflects on her sister Poppy’s early death and wonders if perhaps she has been waiting to give birth to a girl to replace the child who was lost. While in labor with Claude, all Rosie can think is “Poppy.”

Claude is a very intelligent child, crawling at six months and speaking his first word at nine months. At three years old, he decides he wants to be a girl. This desire persists into kindergarten, when Claude begins to wear dresses. Much to the chagrin of Claude’s kindergarten teacher, Rosie and Penn allow Claude to explore his evolving gender identification. The Walsh-Adams family muddles through Claude’s transition until Rosie treats a transgender patient in the ER who is suffering from injuries incurred from a hate crime. The patient is only 19 years old and does not survive. Rosie panics about Claude’s safety in Madison. After Rosie researches tolerant metropolitan areas, she and Penn move their family to Seattle.

The book’s second part picks up when Claude has transitioned to Poppy and is entering the fifth grade. In their new Seattle setting, Rosie and Penn decide not to tell people about Poppy’s past as Claude. As Poppy and her peers approach puberty, Rosie and Penn weigh the options of using hormone blockers to delay Poppy’s biological changes. Poppy’s brothers become worried about keeping Claude a secret. 

Rosie and Penn’s eldest son, Roo, becomes increasingly moody and critical of his parents’ decision to keep Poppy’s past a secret. His point of view culminates in a video project for his history class that his teacher and parents initially interpret as taking a transphobic stance, arguing for banning people in the LGBTQIA+ community from serving in the military. However, Roo later clarifies that the video was supposed to be satire. Roo goes on to write a heartfelt college essay on the ways in which Poppy’s journey has affected and inspired him. 

Midway through the fifth grade, Poppy is bullied by two classmates who accuse her of being a boy. Poppy does not attempt to correct them. In the midst of the teasing, Poppy leaves school to call her mother. By the next day, the whole school has found out about Claude. In retaliation and grief, Poppy cuts all her hair off and insists on going “back” to Claude.

Meanwhile, Rosie and Penn’s disagreement about Poppy’s future and gender identity intensifies. While Rosie argues that Poppy’s life would be easier as Claude, Penn maintains that Claude is not Poppy’s true self. At a crossroads in their relationship, Rosie goes to Thailand for work and brings Poppy. Rosie befriends K, who serves as the clinic’s midwife, ambulance driver, and everything in between. K, who is transgender, advises Rosie to abandon binary thinking when it comes to Poppy’s future.

While Rosie works at the clinic, Claude volunteers at a school teaching English. He is encouraged by his students’ inability to traditionally gender him. Claude begins to teach them through storytelling and even tells them his own story, which they empathize with. While in Thailand, Claude notices the prevalence and acceptance of trans identity there. Penn calls Rosie to tell her he has sold his book, though not the novel he has been working on for years. Instead, he has sold the fairy tale of Grumwald and Princess Stephanie that he had been telling his children for years. Rosie realizes how much she misses Penn and her family and decides to return home. 

Back in Seattle, Poppy returns to school and is surprised to find that her classmates treat her the same way as they did before. Rosie and Penn agree to take Poppy’s future one step at a time without prescribing an ending. Penn reminds Rosie that while fairy tales have finite endings, stories grow as they are shared.