Rainbow Reviews

BOOK BLURB:
Imagine a life lived in secrecy, on a crash course with tragedy that can only be avoided through courageous action that severs oneself from the past, and dooms one life in order to save another.

This unusual tale is the story of Violet Rose whose memoir describes a world marked by all the deprivation and abuse typically associated with parental neglect, alcoholism, and mental illness, but with an added twist ~ prenatal trauma that produced birth defects and gender identity disorder. As a result, Violet Rose had to live a life of many secrets, hiding them and herself behind a fabricated he-man facade.

A personal narrative filled with poignant childhood memories, Dragonfly Daughter recounts how sympathetic protagonist Phil overcomes a childhood scarred by rape, deprivation and fear to achieve the appearance of outward adult success as an accomplished engineer, business owner, husband, and father. It is also the story of Phil’s unraveling, eventual demise and finally the emergence of Violet Rose.

BOOK REVIEW:
Born Phil, the individual who becomes Violet Rose via transsexual readjustment surgery at age 48 is transgender, child of a soldier who died in 1950 and a mother who has other children and remarries too early to suit either her family or her late husband's kin. From earliest childhood, Phil is “different” and always very aware that his emotions are much softer and much less rough-and-tumble than is expected of a boy growing up in the decade of the 1950's. But he tries diligently to “act the man” on the outside, developing an interest in trucks, camping, and like his mother, alcoholism.

As the child of an adult alcoholic who suffered from clinical depression, even more pressures were added to the stress of being a half-orphan and transgender. Eventually Phil married and fathered a child, still trying to continue to “act the part,” but by his late 40's he had stopped even trying to deny his true nature and opted for readjustment surgery. The transformation to Violet Rose did not come easily, though, and apparently her troubles still continue, as friends and relatives have difficulty accepting the reassessment and the transsexual changes.

Although I empathize intellectually with Violet Rose's life story, I found it more difficult to relate to her emotionally, due to the nature of the narrative. Written in an alternating style from addressing her deceased father in second person, to simple third person narrative, and reverse, the memoir becomes somewhat disorienting. I also sympathize with Violet Rose's continuing interpersonal difficulties, which certainly did not cease with the accomplishment of her readjustment surgery, yet I did not perceive that the author is willing to surrender the past to the past and begin to rise above her life and to evolve in her personal growth.

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