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It is a relatively common occurrence for teachers in higher education to find their way back to their alma mater in pursuit of an academic career. The years spent at college define us in many ways, providing a gateway from adolescence to adulthood, a time of profound transition and transformation.  In Iolanthe Woulff's She's My Dad, tall, striking, red haired Nickie Farrell’s decision to return to the bucolic Virginia campus where she graduated as Nick Farrington twenty plus years earlier is not so common an occurrence, and it effectively sets the stage for an uncommonly dramatic debut novel.

Nickie Farrell’s return to the school she attended decades prior to her transition as a MTF transsexual might seem a sufficiently complex premise for any novel, but the complications do not begin or end there.  Unbeknownst to Ms. Farrell, Nick Farrington’s affair with the docile and beleaguered, unhappily married Luanne Skinner while a student at Windfield College, produced a son, Nicholas (“Collie”) Skinner.  It is a secret that Luanne guards with her life and that ultimately erupts in a carefully and intricately plotted tangle of intrigue, homophobia, racism, violence, romance and above all, self affirmation. 

Still dealing with the formidable challenges of adjusting to life as a trans woman, Nickie Farrell also finds herself at the volatile center of a community teetering between tolerance and hatred, and of a deadly plot to purge that community of the perceived threats to ‘traditional’ morals and values that she conspicuously embodies.  Clearly this story and its central characters are close to Woulff’s heart and informed by her own journey as a trans woman.  Her heroine is sensitively and thoughtfully drawn, alternately and appropriately fierce and fragile, compelling in both her struggles and her strengths.  Nickie's tentative and tenuous romance with male colleague Alex Steward is both bittersweet and revealing.  Woulff also provides a believable and pivotal developmental trajectory for young Collie Skinner, the son Nickie never knew she had, as he confronts the truth about who he is and how to integrate the revelations about his own identity and roots in the context of a world view severely constricted by his upbringing and environment.   

It is an ambitious first novel—roughly 400 pages long with a swirling storyline that, though cleverly managed, still seems at times too much to fully flesh out even with the daunting length of the book. One prevailing impression is that there is more than enough story for a fine sequel or even a series, with more time and space to focus separately on the abundance of compelling threads woven together here, such as Nickie’s navigation of the tricky waters of romance with Alex Steward, her coming to terms with the shock of being a parent to a grown son, and the complicated elements of intrigue and malicious prejudice that form the dynamic backdrop of this work. 

Despite some issues for this Virginia-born and raised reviewer with the premise of a college in the Old Dominion founded on the principles of sexual tolerance and diversity—and some occasionally stilted, Harlequinesque romantic vernacular—Woulff succeeds in creating an uncommonly appealing main character whose story is engaging and illuminating and ultimately, heartwarming.  Moreover, she succeeds admirably in accomplishing that most critical task for the first-time novelist:  She leaves her readers eager for more.

Reviewed by Dan Stone