Susan Faludi investigates her dad's sex change in 'Darkroom'

Parents of any age are capable of surprising their children, most of us have learned.

Susan Faludi’s mercurial father pulled off what was undoubtedly one of the biggest-ever parental stunners a few years back, announcing via emailed photos of himself in ruffled blouses, polka-dotted skirts, and come-hither poses that he was no longer a man. The email was signed, “Love from your parent, Stefanie.”

There had been hormone treatments and surgeries in Thailand, things the daughter knew nothing about, inasmuch as the two had barely spoken for years. But this new development was sufficiently intriguing enough for the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author (Backlash) to board a plane to visit Stefi in Hungary, the country to which her parent had returned after decades of life in the U.S. Faludi now writes about what she learned in her new book, In the Darkroom (Metropolitan Books, 417 pp., ** out of four stars).

She carried with her notebooks and recording devices, hoping to write the story of the woman who until Faludi’s teen years, when her parents divorced, had been a domineering man of  many secrets, vacillating moods, and precise notions about how things must be.

This should have turned into a compelling personal-journey tale — of a father’s decisions and a daughter’s discoveries — built upon wrenching insights and rich details about the thinking, struggles, motivations, second-guessing, doubts, fears and adjustments that accompany changing one’s sex (and nation and many other things).

However, Faludi quickly discovered that in temperament Stefi was precisely the same person Faludi had struggled with when her father had been Steven: dismissive of any question Stefi didn’t want to answer, contemptuous of any conversation she lacked interest in, imperious, impenetrable, self-absorbed and not at all forthcoming about much of anything. Stefi had said she wanted her life story told, but, it turned out, only on her terms, and only those aspects of it she wished to discuss, doled out almost resentfully.

So Faludi embarked on painstaking, years-long investigative fact-finding — nosing through documents, tracking down people who had known her father as a child, speaking with long-estranged relatives, pursuing this story as she would have if she had been writing about a stranger. Which, of course, Steven had been and Stefi still was.

There are interesting stories about Steven as a teen during the Holocaust and his subsequent adventures in Denmark and South America before he arrived in the U.S. and became a revered darkroom professional, in huge demand among top agencies and magazines and photographers.

And then there are pages upon pages of the history of Hungary, the history of Jews in that country — generations-old history that in some cases might help explain some of the inbred mechanisms that could have led to Stefi being what Stefi was.

But some of the historical research, though impressive, seems a stretch relevance-wise and is far more detailed than any but the most passionate family-tree searcher would regard as interesting.

It’s understandable that not every thread is neatly tied or every question fully answered. In the end, though, In the Darkroom fails to shed real light.

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Sharon Peters is author of Trusting Calvin: How a Dog Helped Heal a Holocaust Survivor’s Heart.