by Susan Faludi
First published 2016
Susan Faludi begins what she thinks will be a straightforward reckoning with her absent father. She plans to build a case against this man who abandoned his obligations and disappeared from her life. But when she learns that her seventy-six-year-old father, now living in Hungary, has undergone sex reassignment surgery, her investigation shifts completely. The prosecutor becomes a witness to something far more complex than paternal neglect. Faludi travels to Hungary to meet this parent who now calls herself "a complete woman." There she encounters not only her transformed father but also a country wrestling with its own identity crisis. Hungary works to suppress its dark history while building a dangerous new nationalism. As Faludi digs into her father's past lives as American dad, mountain climber, Amazon adventurer, and Holocaust survivor, she confronts the central question of our time: whether identity is chosen or inescapable.
Genres: historical-fiction, biography-memoir, gender-identity, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, identity-exploration, personal-journey
Setting: Hungary
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
14 pages · Audio CD · Blackstone Publishing