HURRICANE LESSONS

Willis offers a memoir of how her realization of her sexual orientation created turbulence in her settled suburban life.

In the mid-2010s, the author was a 45-year-old wife and mother in small-town Ohio with “a big life—one that looked enviable from the outside.” She realized that she was gay after she met her private Pilates trainer, Cecilia, with whom she would go on to form an intense friendship: “I did everything she said. I was smitten, obsessed. My fascination with her consumed me.” Willis’ affection for Cecilia, however, ultimately went unrequited, just as her marriage to her husband, Charles, began to unravel. The emergence of her new life as a gay woman is the titular “hurricane,” and her memoir is thus divided into three parts whose titles play on this theme: “The Calm Before the Storm,” “The Eyewall,” and “The Aftermath.” The author recounts the story of her major life transition with reflections and numerous texts and email transcripts, some of which almost feel too personal to read; at least some are re-creations, according to the author. Willis’ prose is skillful, but readers may get lost in the memoir’s quick, vague temporal shifts, which pinball between different eras in the author’s life without explicit warning; years are rarely stated. For example, after a chapter in which she moves out of the house she shared with her husband, she recounts a past fight via texts with Charles before recalling another moment in their life from “years before.” Readers zigzag between Indiana, Mississippi, and Ohio, picking up clues to chronology along the way, and the effect will be somewhat dizzying to those attempting to trace the development of her self-actualization. Ultimately, Willis’ account of her midlife epiphany and courage does come together, although readers may find it uncomfortably raw at times.

An engaging and sometimes-painful recollection of the trials of self-acceptance.