In One Person

William Abbott, a bisexual novelist in his late sixties, narrates the story of his life from the small town of First Sister, Vermont, where his sexual awakening, his vocation as a writer, and his lifelong struggle against intolerance all began. The narrative moves freely between past and present, tracing Billy's relationships, losses, and the slow process of becoming himself.

Billy grows up in his grandparents' house on River Street, raised by his single mother, Mary Marshall Dean, who works as the prompter for the local amateur theater company, the First Sister Players. Billy's biological father, William Francis Dean, a wartime cryptographer the family calls "the code-boy," left before Billy was two; Billy knows him only through a single photograph. Billy's grandfather, Harry Marshall, owns the town sawmill and is a beloved female impersonator who regularly plays women's roles onstage. Billy's domineering aunt, Muriel, competes with Grandpa Harry for the best female parts and is married to Uncle Bob, the admissions man at Favorite River Academy, the town's private boarding school.

At thirteen, Billy is mesmerized by Miss Frost, the tall, broad-shouldered librarian of the First Sister Public Library. That same year, Richard Abbott, a handsome young English teacher at Favorite River, arrives at a casting call for the First Sister Players and transforms both the theater and Billy's life. Richard begins dating Billy's mother and discovers that Billy has never had a library card. He takes Billy to the library, where Miss Frost recommends novels about "crushes on the wrong people," igniting Billy's passion for reading and his desire to become a writer.

Richard marries Billy's mother in 1957 and legally adopts Billy, changing his name to William Marshall Abbott. Billy enters Favorite River as a freshman and develops an agonizing crush on Jacques Kittredge, a charismatic and cruel senior wrestler. Kittredge nicknames Billy "Nymph" after Billy is cast as Ariel in Richard's production of The Tempest. Meanwhile, Billy and Elaine Hadley, the daughter of another faculty family, form a deep friendship and begin a masquerade as boyfriend and girlfriend to deflect suspicion from Billy's true desires. During tentative sexual exploration, Billy keeps one of Elaine's padded bras, discovering he is aroused by the idea of wearing it.

Billy confides his conflicting attractions to Elaine's mother, Martha Hadley, who becomes his first real counselor. Mrs. Hadley assures him he has done nothing wrong and warns that his mother is keeping secrets from him. Elaine, meanwhile, secretly becomes involved with Kittredge and becomes pregnant. Kittredge's mother, a beautiful French woman, takes Elaine to Europe for an abortion and confides that she seduced her own son when he was in eighth grade. Billy's mother, upon learning of the pregnancy, is furious not that Billy got Elaine pregnant but that he didn't, revealing her fear of his emerging sexual orientation.

At seventeen, Billy returns to the library and confesses to Miss Frost that he has crushes on both her and Kittredge. She gives him James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and leads him to her basement bedroom, where they share a sexual encounter that stops short of penetration. Searching through old Favorite River yearbooks, Billy discovers that Miss Frost appears as "A. Frost," wrestling-team captain in the Class of 1935 and a male day student nicknamed "Big Al." He realizes Miss Frost was assigned male at birth and that his family has always known.

Billy confronts Miss Frost, who confirms her history and, during a second encounter, again refuses penetration. That night, Grandpa Harry arrives, sent by the family, who have found Giovanni's Room and Elaine's bra under Billy's pillow. Billy is forbidden from seeing Miss Frost. He defiantly gives the school physician, Dr. Harlow, who considers homosexuality a treatable affliction, a graphic account of his experience. Shortly after, Billy discovers the truth about his biological father: Franny Dean was a cross-dressing student at Favorite River who performed women's roles onstage. Uncle Bob confirms that Billy's mother once saw Franny kissing another man, a soldier who became Franny's lifelong partner. Grandpa Harry tells Billy that his mother "never understood the dressin'-up part."

Miss Frost is fired from the library and prepares to leave First Sister. Before she goes, she teaches Billy a single wrestling move, the duck-under, for self-defense. Coach Herm Hoyt continues the drilling: "You've got one move. When you hit your duck-under, you get the hell out of there."

The narrative follows Billy through the decades. He spends the summer of 1961 in Europe with Tom Atkins, a timid classmate, reading Madame Bovary aloud while the two begin a sexual relationship. During his junior year abroad in Vienna, Billy has his first girlfriend, Esmeralda Soler, a soprano understudy, and also becomes the lover of Lawrence "Larry" Upton, a distinguished American poet who serves as both writing teacher and partner. Billy identifies definitively as bisexual, though he learns that bisexual men are distrusted within the gay community. He publishes his first novel in 1969 and moves through relationships with men and women, including Donna, a transsexual woman whose insecurity about Billy's bisexuality drives them apart. In February 1978, Billy's mother and Aunt Muriel are killed in a head-on collision with drunk drivers. At the memorial gathering, Uncle Bob reveals that Billy's father is living happily in Spain.

The AIDS epidemic devastates Billy's world through the 1980s and 1990s. Russell, the young lover of Billy's former partner Larry, is the first person Billy watches waste away. Tom Atkins is dying of AIDS in Short Hills, New Jersey; his wife, Sue, has also been infected. Tom asks Billy to watch over his son, especially if the boy turns out to be "like us," and cryptically reports having "seen" Kittredge, calling him "not at all who we thought he was." Billy and Elaine move into Larry's townhouse to care for him and finally share what they each know about Kittredge. Elaine reveals that Mrs. Kittredge seduced her son not to build his confidence but because he had always wanted to be a girl, and his mother believed sex with a woman would cure him. Larry dies in December 1986, in Billy and Elaine's arms, while Elaine sings a Mendelssohn aria.

Grandpa Harry dies by suicide at ninety. Miss Frost is killed at seventy-three in a bar fight with four young airmen in New Hampshire. In 1995, Uncle Bob reports that Kittredge has died in Zurich at fifty-four, survived by a wife and son. Billy and Elaine believe he died of AIDS. Billy moves back to his grandfather's house on River Street.

Years later, Billy visits his father in Madrid, where Franny performs nightly in a small nightclub called Señor Bovary, run by his lifelong partner. In a glittering dress, Franny tells the audience the only story he knows: how he met the love of his life on a toilet at sea. Billy calls him "Dad" for the first time as they part.

In the fall of 2007, Billy meets Gee Montgomery, a fourteen-year-old transgender student who has come to Favorite River because Billy went there. When a football player calls Gee a slur and strikes her, Billy executes the duck-under Miss Frost taught him, slamming the larger boy to the floor. He begins teaching and directing at the academy, eventually casting Gee as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet by her senior year. During rehearsals in 2010, Kittredge's son appears, angry and accusatory. He confirms his father became a woman and died of AIDS, and accuses Billy of making "sexual extremes seem normal." Billy responds with Miss Frost's words: "My dear boy, please don't put a label on me, don't make me a category before you get to know me!"