Labor of Love

November 3, 2008
Best known as the world's first pregnant man, transgendered father and husband Beatie recounts, in touching detail, his difficult path to the 2007-08 pregnancy that briefly captured the world's attention. Born a girl in Hawaii to a violent, unpredictable father and a caring mother (who committed suicide while Beatie was a teen), Beatie learned to understand the nature of his identity against a backdrop dominated by fear and instability. Beatie is a detailed and engaging writer, relating his upbringing, his romance (with wife Nancy) and the process of transitioning from female to male with humility, honesty and plenty of opinion, and little to court sensation or controversy. For better and worse, the memoir reads predictably until Beatie and Nancy, 200 pages in, begin their struggles to get pregnant with daughter Susan. Once Beatie finds his focus in the obstacles he and his wife faced and overcame, his account becomes a compelling, unique narrative. Beatie's straightforward, apolitical style and compelling, elemental story-one man's struggle, against all odds, to create a family-will make it easy for most readers to identify.