As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and Patriarchy After I Transitioned

In this earnest, empathetic debut, Williams aims to bridge her Christian faith with her transgender identity as she reconciles these aspects of her life. Raised by a pastor father and emotionally volatile mother, her path in ministry was all but preordained. Early on, she was ambivalent about her assigned (male) gender. “I did not dislike being a boy,” she recalls, and she felt she was meant to be a girl. She married her college sweetheart, Cathy, in 1972, and moved up in the evangelical church, raising three children and becoming CEO of the Orchard Group, a “church planting” ministry. But the call to transition was impossible to ignore, so she began hormone therapy. Her transition was met by a harsh rejection from the Orchard Group and eventually a divorce from Cathy. After making her living as part of an institution built on condemning LGBTQ individuals, she discovered that the authority she enjoyed as a straight white man was unavailable to her as a trans lesbian. She did manage, though, to carve out new leadership roles in affirming churches and continues to work as a pastor. While she examines her new perspective with humility and grace, Williams’s observations about patriarchy won’t come as revelations to most women and LGBTQ readers. Those haunted by evangelical culture will find much to ponder in this story. Agent: Roger Freet, Foundry Literary + Media. (June)