She's Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband

by Helen Boyd

Seal Press (Avalon). 290 pages, $15.95 (paper)

ASK ANY EAGER MOTHER- or father-to-be about the gender of the new baby, and you can nearly guarantee that their eyes will light up. Ask what they "want" the baby to be, and you might hear that they want a boy or they may want a girl, or they might tell you that it doesn't matter, as long as the baby is healthy.

But what is gender? Can we be entirely male or female, or is there a middle ground where gender isn't based on physical characteristics? What happens when physical appearance belies the man or woman inside the body? Author Helen Boyd tackles these questions in her new memoir, She's Not the Man I Married. Growing up, Boyd tells us, she was always a tomboy. She blithely did everything the neighborhood boys did, playing the same games and riding...