Sacred Country

By: Rose Tremain

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Synopsis: Sweeping through three decades, from the repressive English countryside of the nineteen-fifties to London of the sixties and seventies America, this story follows Mary's fight to become Martin, as well as the troubled family and circle of acquaintances and friends who also make up the core of this remarkable, emotional yet unsentimental novel. At the age of six, Mary, the child of a Suffolk farm family had a revelation--she knew she was not a girl, but was meant to be a boy. Where this realization takes Mary is the ostensible subject of Sacred Country, although British writer Rose Tremain so lovingly treats the bleak town of Swaithey, England, where Mary grows up, and the vivid people around her, that the novel eddies out to encompass others in the village and the times. With a steady eye, the harsh circumstances of Mary's upbringing and her disconnection from her body and surroundings are revealed. That so much humor and magic in Mary's slow transformation into Martin can be found is remarkable, but the book may be most memorable for its quiet realism and exacting prose.

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