This Is How It Always Is A Novel

Laurie Frankel's terrific exploration of parenting, gender issues, unconditional love, and family is one hell of a read. When three-year-old Claude asks to wear a dress and refers to being a girl when he grows up, parents Rosie and Penn realize they are in a situation for which they are woefully unprepared. Doing everything they possibly can to support their child, Rosie and Penn help Claude transition into Poppy. She's thrilled to be Poppy and blossoms into a happy, joyful child. Yet there are problems; there are secrets; there are ominous situations.

Frankel writes a story so beautiful and so heartbreaking, it's painful to read, but also gorgeous. Exploring themes of self-identity, self-loathing, and self-esteem in the transgender community, along with family, home, belonging, the agony of choosing the unknown, the flight from danger, and the slipping out of secrets, Frankel weaves a layered, complex, and rich story. An amazing accomplishment, This Is How It Always Is will be required reading for 2017. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

This is how a family keeps a secret... and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after... until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change... and then change the world.

This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it's about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don't get to keep them forever.

"This is a family that you will take into your heart and — like all friends — you will welcome the changes that they bring to your life." The Seattle Review of Books

"Laurie Frankel writes with more heart than anyone I can think of....With emotional acuity, admirable bravery, utter compassion, and complete understanding, she's created a family attempting to forge a path through one of life's most mystifying challenges: how to define what it is that makes your child who he or she is: unique, beloved, and whole. This is a novel everyone should read. It's brilliant. It's bold. And it's time." Elizabeth George, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Banquet of Consequences

"In This is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel spins a beguiling tale of a sprawling, loving, ever-changing, unconventional, and yet completely typical modern family as they make their way though a world with no easy answers and no magic solutions. How does Frankel pull off such a story? With great humor and candor. With a powerful narrative voice, and a forthrightness so compelling, we are drawn into the family circle to laugh and cry with them, and to ponder issues great and small. An intimate, wonderfully moving novel that is especially relevant in today's world." Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of A Sudden Light and The Art of Racing in the Rain

"A lively and fascinating story of a thoroughly modern family and the giant, multifaceted love that binds them. This Is How It Always Is sparkles with wit and wisdom." Maria Semple, New York Times bestselling author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette

"It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think." Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of novels such as The Atlas of Love, Goodbye for Now, and the Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick, This Is How It Always Is. Frankel lives in Seattle with her husband, daughter, and border collie. She makes good soup.