Woodworking

St. James debuts with the delightful story of an unlikely friendship between a closeted transgender high school teacher and her openly trans student. It's 2016 in Mitchell, S.Dak., where Erica Skyberg, recently divorced, grudgingly presents as a man and answers to her dead name. She comes out to Abigail, 17, an out trans girl who's new to the school, and the two form a secret bond. Abigail gives Erica nail polish and provides tips on her transition, and Erica begins to face her fears. Tensions mount when Abigail starts dating Caleb Daniels, the son of Erica's friend Brooke, an affluent conservative Christian with whom Erica runs a community theater group. Not only is Erica's ex-wife, Constance, a star of the show, but Brooke develops a fascination with Abigail for reasons that only come out later. With a local transphobic politician on the rise, Erica fears she'll be outed and lose her job, and that her friendship with Abigail will be misconstrued. St. James enthralls with her depiction of what it's like to be trans in a conservative and insular community, and the courage it takes for people to openly be themselves. This engrossing drama is a must-read. Agent: Victoria Marini, Volume Literary. (Mar.)

A trans teen helps her English teacher through the fraught process of coming out as transgender in small-town Mitchell, South Dakota. Thirty-five-year-old Erica Skyberg has always known she was a woman, despite the fact that she's still Mr. Skyberg to her high school students and, well, to everyone else. Her ex-wife, Connie, with whom Erica is still in love, is pregnant by her new Trump-supporting farmer boyfriend. It's only when 17-year-old Abigail Hawkes--spiky, foul-mouthed, outspokenly trans--transfers to Mitchell High that Erica has someone to tell her secret to. Abigail's got enough of her own problems and complications: parents who have kicked her out, a boyfriend whose rich conservative mom is bankrolling a state political campaign for a local transphobic preacher, and Abigail's own work as a volunteer for the preacher's Democratic rival. (The novel is set in the autumn preceding the 2016 election, which feels long enough ago in the timeline of transgender politics as to constitute historical fiction.) As the only trans person Erica knows, Abigail reluctantly becomes her sounding board, and Erica feels guilty leaning on her; they gradually grow close even as their relationship draws scrutiny and suspicion from the people around them. Alternating primarily between Erica's third-person chapters and Abigail's first-person ones, St. James contrasts Erica's attempts to be seen for who she really is with Abigail's thwarted desire for "woodworking," or disappearing into the woodwork to achieve the normalcy she thinks she so badly wants. ("I'll be hiding in the walls, trying to be any other girl, like in that one story with the yellow wallpaper," she vows.) St. James' plot moves like a Shakespeare comedy--some contrivances, yes, but all in the service of portraying the prismatic variations of the characters here, both cis and trans, who alternately fail themselves and each other, and work to rescue them back again. Pristinely characterized, this debut novel is by turns funny and heartrending. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.