Synopsis
What happens when the establishment lawyer son of a prominent WASP family and a baker, the son of Catholic Italian immigrants team up together while going through sex changes? How their families and employers react, legal issues and the law partnership, the variable factors between different family members, the issues surrounding divorce all have a part. The tragedy of a family member who contracts AIDS, the hippie couple, the lesbian marriage, the uppercrust club reactions all contribute background to the central story of Paul who becomes Paula and finds romance and, Mario who becomes Maria and starts a business empire. This fictional story depends for its accuracy on the author’s experience as a counsellor and a first hand knowledge of the subject which is told with compassion, humanity, understanding, dignity and humour.
About the Author
Transgender author Stephanie Castle, at age 87, says she is now in her twilight years, but even though there are undreamed of burdens to be confronted as part of the aging process, she says that a driving force that keeps her active mind always well oiled and her physical being moving, is her writing activity which she describes as her occupational therapy. Well known internationally under her other name as a maritime historian and prolific author of shipping books and as a contributor to maritime magazines, Stephanie has now largely retired from that sector and looks upon the enjoyable writing of her fiction as a late retirement project that pays handsome dividends in the form of endless satisfaction. Stephanie comes honestly by her knowledge of transsexualism as the result of a life long exposure to the condition. For her (when still a boy) it was first revealed to her sometime in her fifth year, in a dream that told her there was a mysterious aspect to her life that was beyond description. Very simply she appeared in that dream as a girl and this was further confirmed when she had a similar experience some while later. That dream of over eighty years ago is permanently etched in her mind and she remembers it in detail to this day. While the story in the dream was very simple, understanding its significance and discussing it with anyone who might have an understanding was so complex in her infant mind, she never revealed it to anyone until about sixty years later by which time transsexualism (also known as gender dysphoria, or gender identity condition) was not only being better understood, but by then there were plenty of cases being identified and treated in most Western countries. For Stephanie the study of human personalities provides endless fascination as it is from this very broad resource that her characterizations are drawn. She says, “You latch onto a personality that fits your plot and as you develop a mental picture of them and instinctively get inside the character, you tend to move with their mental attitudes, moods and passions. An interesting aspect for me is the feeling of a long standing friendship with my favourite characters and as the stories are mostly to do with a continuum of today’s life in and around Vancouver, Vancouver Island and the Okanagan district of B.C. some supporting characters appear like old friends suitably revived for a new plot.
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