Woodworking

Erica Skyberg is thirty-five, newly divorced and trans, and nobody in Mitchell, South Dakota knows. She teaches English during the day and directs community theater at night, and she keeps the rest of her life private. The town has no other trans women that she knows of.

Then Abigail Hawkes, a senior at Mitchell High, comes into her life. Abigail is seventeen, openly political, and the only out trans girl in the school. She plays that part well, though not always willingly. The idea of spending her last year of school quietly helping her teacher through a transition irritates her. She still remembers how uncertain and lonely the start felt, so she agrees.

Erica is not the only one weighed down by what other people expect of her. As the friendship between teacher and student grows, the town begins to watch it closely, and the scrutiny puts pressure on both of them and on the people near them.

The book is a contemporary novel about two trans women at very different stages, set in a small Midwestern town. It is character-driven, built around one friendship and what it costs to stay hidden or to stop hiding.