MY LAST SKIRT

Jennie Hodgers lived in a world without passports, naturalization papers, social security numbers and driver’s licenses—none of the proofs of identification we take for granted today. She passed as a boy in Ireland to shepherd the bishop’s flock, and became Georgie Hodgers in Queens, N.Y. because boys’ jobs paid better. She was a farmhand in Illinois and joined the 95th Illinois Infantry as Albert Cashier. All of her life she felt “free and trapped, male and female, and all at the same time,” and self-questioning about her identity is the heart of this fine tale based on a true story. What exactly makes a person who she is? Is she simply who we say she is? Are you yourself, even when living a lie? Durrant succeeds brilliantly in showing what it would have been like to be Jennie Hodgers, making her circumscribed existence feel as claustrophobic and lonely as it must have been. Useful in collections on the Civil War, immigration, women’s rights and Charles Darwin. (afterword, bibliography) (Fiction. 11-15)