num_pages: 276
description: Its the 1930s in Texas when Charlie Bader comes of age with urges he has struggled with since childhood and does not understand. After his new bride finds him wearing her own sexy lingerie and leaves him in disgust he tries to move on. His efforts lead him to Chicago where he stumbles on a community of cross-dressers and begins to attend their secret soirees. When Pearl Harbor is bombed he volunteers for the army serving as a dentist and trying once again to leave his obsession with soft clothes behind. Instead his wartime experiences combined with the army's faulty record-keeping lead to his reappearance in the small town of Heaven Indiana as Charlene. There Charlene opens a beauty shop where Heavens women safely share their stories and secrets as she shampoos clips curls and combs their hair. Charlene deftly manages to keep her own story hidden and her sexual desires quiet until she falls in love with a female customer and her life begins to change.
language: English
title: Earth as It Is
publisher: Break Away Book Club Edition