Back in 2004, after shed been estranged from him for almost a quarter century, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Susan Faludi got an email from her father announcing her gender-confirmation surgery.
Despite our long alienation, I thought I understood enough of my fathers character to have had some inkling of an inclination this profound, Faludi writes.
I had none.
So she began traveling to Hungary to talk with her dad, morphing from daughter to investigative reporter as she tried to reconcile her memories of the father she remembered as an imperious patriarch named Steven with the gentler, pearl-earringed Stefanie.
Its a gripping and honest personal journeybolstered by reams of researchthat ultimately transcends family and addresses much bigger questions of identity and reinvention.A
