By Way of Sorrow

 

 

In the December 11 New York Times Book Review, Sarah Weinman made a series of recommendations for Best Crime Novels of 2022. One book she recommended was by Robyn Gigl, whose debut novel I was able to get from the local library.

By Way of Sorrow is a court procedural involving the killing of a white man by a black transgender woman, who claims to have done it in self-defense. The main character in the book, a defense attorney named Erin McCabe is a transgender woman as well. As is the author herself.

I grew up in an era when the existence of people whose sexual identity was different than that assigned to them at birth was not part of any public or private discourse I ever took part in or heard of. I'm sure that there must have been such people, probably many of them, but nobody in my world ever talked about that, or seemed to be aware of it. I've become more aware of the issues in recent years, mostly as a result of the efforts of LGBTQ advocacy groups, and, more recently, because of the backlash in certain parts of the political arena against those efforts. But I still, to the best of my knowledge, have never personally interacted with a transgendered person, nor have I read anything that made it clear to me what it was that I didn't know. I had no clue about what it would be like to be transgendered, or about the kinds of treatment that transgender people are likely to be subjected to by others: their families, their friends, the police, the criminal system. Until I read this book.

Erin McCabe, and her law partner Duane Swisher, agree to take on the case of Sharise Barnes partly because Erin feels an intuitive bond with Sharise based on their shared experience. But it becomes apparent early on to the two lawyers that there is arrayed against them and their client a complex and multilayered network of unscrupulous people with influence in the criminal justice system, and that those people will be willing to do whatever it takes to keep the trial from moving forward.

Let me be clear: this is a terrific book from a purely storytelling standpoint. It's clearly written, and carefully plotted. It features likeable, wholly believable characters who are subjected to a series of escalating tensions that lead to a very dramatic conclusion. And it's very difficult not to experience alarm and indignation on behalf of the protagonists as the dangers confronting them continue to mount. It's an intense reading experience for sure. But the book also seems to be intended as a kind of primer for open-minded readers into the challenges and complexities of living as a transgender person in a world which is still largely hostile to the very idea that such a person can, or should, even exist. 

I'm not going to go into detail about the way that the story unfolds. Suffice it to say that it was an amazing read and that along the way I learned a whole lot about gender politics that I never knew. That educative function is most certainly one of the author's objectives as a writer, and she carries it off without sermonizing or letting it draw attention away from the story she is telling. 

By Way of Sorrow is, on balance, one of the best books I've read in the last few years. And as it happens, Robyn Gigl has just come out with a second Erin McCabe book, Survivor's Guilt, which Sarah Weinman thinks is even better. So I'm looking forward to reading that.