Trans-Sister Radio: A Novel

Read by Judith Ivey
Three Cassettes, Approx. 5 hours

What if the person you have fallen madly, firmly in love with were to tell you that they are someone else--someone you are suddenly unsure you know? New York Times best-selling author Chris Bohjalian, known and loved for his inventive tales of people caught in moral and ethical dilemmas, posits this very question in a romantic and edgy new novel that's impossible to put down.

Alison Banks is an elementary school teacher in her early 40s, whose only daughter is leaving soon for college. To take her mind off the impending separation, she takes a course at the local college and finds herself falling in love with her instructor, Dana. Handsome, sexy, and charming, he is the man Alison had given up hope of ever meeting.

Months into their almost idyllic relationship, he confides a powerful and intimate piece of information: he loves her, but he has long known that he is a woman trapped in the body of a man. After much soul searching and in order to free himself, he is having a sex-change operation at the end of the year.

Alison bolts, but comes back to him when she realizes how deeply in love she actually is. The story is told--in alternating chapters--by Alison; her teenage daughter, Carly; her ex-husband, Will; and the charismatic Dana, each adding layers of insight and complexity, each responding in his or her own way to the issue of how and why we love exactly who we do.

In his best-selling novels Midwives and The Law of Similars, Chris Bohjalian examined, with remarkable subtlety and empathy, how lives can be changed through one seemingly random occurrence. In Trans-Sister Radio, he uses that subtlety and empathy to explore the very nature of love and identity. With this compelling, unforgettable new novel, Bohjalian gives his many readers a love story, a tense cautionary tale of morality, an outstanding cast of characters, and a whole new way of thinking about love.