This Is How It Always Is, a novel by Laurie Frankel, was published in 2017. It was a New York Times best seller, one of People magazine’s Top 10 Books of 2017, and a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick. 

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, child death, transgender discrimination, bullying, illness, graphic violence, and antigay bias. 

Language Note: The source material centers on a transgender individual assigned male at birth who changes her name from Claude to Poppy and then temporarily back to Claude. This study guide uses she/her pronouns and “Poppy” for the character throughout but indicates name changes as they occur.

Plot Summary

Dr. Rosie Walsh is pregnant with her fifth child. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her writer husband, Penn Adams, and their four boys. At the beginning of the book, Rosie reflects on her sister Poppy’s early death and wonders if perhaps she has been waiting to give birth to a girl to replace the child who was lost. While in labor, all Rosie can think is “Poppy.”

Poppy is assigned male at birth and given the name Claude. She is a very intelligent child, crawling at six months and speaking her first word at nine months. At three years old, she realizes that she is a girl. In kindergarten, Poppy begins to wear dresses. Much to the chagrin of Poppy’s kindergarten teacher, Rosie and Penn allow Poppy to explore her evolving gender identity. The Walsh-Adams family muddles through Poppy’s transition until Rosie treats a transgender patient in the ER for injuries incurred from a hate crime. The patient is only 19 years old and does not survive. Rosie panics about Poppy’s safety in Madison. After Rosie researches tolerant metropolitan areas, she and Penn move their family to Seattle.

The book’s second part picks up when Poppy has stopped using the name Claude and is entering the fifth grade. In their new Seattle setting, Rosie and Penn decide not to tell people about Poppy’s past as Claude. As Poppy and her peers approach puberty, Rosie and Penn weigh the options of using hormone blockers to delay Poppy’s biological changes. Poppy’s brothers become worried about keeping Poppy’s past a secret. 

Rosie and Penn’s eldest son, Roo, becomes increasingly moody and critical of his parents’ decision to keep this past a secret. His point of view culminates in a video project for his history class that his teacher and parents initially interpret as taking an anti-trans stance, arguing for banning people in the LGBTQIA+ community from serving in the military. However, Roo later clarifies that the video was supposed to be satire. Roo goes on to write a heartfelt college essay on the ways in which Poppy’s journey has affected and inspired him. 

Midway through the fifth grade, Poppy is bullied by two classmates who accuse her of being a boy. Poppy does not attempt to correct them. In the midst of the teasing, Poppy leaves school to call her mother. By the next day, the whole school has found out about her past. In retaliation and grief, Poppy cuts all her hair off and insists on going “back” to Claude. 

Meanwhile, Rosie and Penn’s disagreement about Poppy’s future and gender identity intensifies. While Rosie argues that Poppy’s life would be easier as Claude, Penn maintains that Claude is not Poppy’s true self. At a crossroads in their relationship, Rosie goes to Thailand for work and brings Poppy. Rosie befriends K, who serves as the clinic’s midwife, ambulance driver, and everything in between. K, who is transgender, advises Rosie to abandon binary thinking when it comes to Poppy’s future.

While Rosie works at the clinic, Poppy volunteers at a school teaching English. She is encouraged by her students’ inability to traditionally gender her. She begins to teach them through storytelling and even tells them her own story, which they empathize with. While in Thailand, she notices the prevalence and acceptance of trans identity there. Penn calls Rosie to tell her he has sold his book, though not the novel he has been working on for years. Instead, he has sold the fairy tale of Grumwald and Princess Stephanie that he had been telling his children for years. Rosie realizes how much she misses Penn and her family and decides to return home. 

Back in Seattle, Poppy returns to school and is surprised to find that her classmates treat her the same way as they did before. Rosie and Penn agree to take Poppy’s future one step at a time without prescribing an ending. Penn reminds Rosie that while fairy tales have finite endings, stories grow as they are shared.