Soon, they end up moving the whole family from the conservative Midwest to progressive Seattle in an attempt to give Poppy a fresh start and-hopefully-find a more progressive community. Then, a series of events unfold through the pages that bring us to the novel’s first turning point: Poppy proclaims that she is a girl, and her whole family scrambles to understand as best they can. The novel first takes us through the early years of Poppy’s life, portraying her as intelligent and emotionally mature beyond her years. When Poppy was born (which is when this story begins), doctors originally determined her to be male, and her parents gave her the name Claude. There’s Penn (an author), Rosie (a physician), and their five children: Roo, Ben, twins Rigel and Orion, and their youngest, Poppy.

The book centers on a large family of seven living in Madison, Wisconsin. As a writer myself, I know that titles can add so much to the work as a whole, which is exactly why I was so excited to dive in and find out what Laurie Frankel meant by proclaiming that “this is how it always is. At first, the title read as a nonsensical jumble of the plainest words in the English language: this is how it always is. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the storyline that most intrigued me before picking up this book-it was the title. This Is How It Always Is, a novel by author Laurie Frankel that is based on her own family, takes the reader across a decade in time and as far away as a remote village in Thailand to tell the story of a transgender child* and her family’s efforts to accept, protect, and celebrate her.

The book this is how it always is