When Carolyn Hays child made clear to the family that they were all wrong, he was not a boy, but, in fact, a girl, the Hays shifted pronouns, adopted a nickname and encouraged her to dress as she felt comfortable. One ordinary day, a caseworker from the Department of Children and Families knocked on their door to investigate an anonymous complaint about the upbringing of their transgender child. It was this threat that instilled in them a deep-seated fear for their child s safety in the Republican state they called home.

And so they uprooted their lives to the more trans-accepting Northeast United States, though they were never far from the hate and fear resting at the nation s core.

Intimate, lyrical and thought-provoking, an ode to Hays brilliant, brave child, as well as a cathartic revisit of the pain of the past. It tells of the brutal truths of being trans, of the sacrificial nature of motherhood, and of the lengths a family will go to shield their youngest from the cruel realities of the world. Hays asks us all to love better, for children everywhere who are enduring injustice and prejudice just as they begin to understand themselves.