Thomas Beatie electrified the world in April 2008 with his announcement that he was seven months pregnant. He recounted his amazing story on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and was later featured in a Barbara Walters Exclusive, where he announced that he and his wife, Nancy, were expecting their second child. While Thomas’s story made global headlines, there’s much more to his story than his pregnancies.

Labor of Love chronicles Thomas Beatie’s unique life experiences: his less-than-idyllic childhood in Hawaii; his transition from female to male; his marriage to his wife, Nancy; his legal battles to live as a man; his fight to conceive a child; and the birth of their daughter, Susan, in late June. Labor of Love is a groundbreaking book because it tackles social, political, and legal questions about gender, marriage, and family. Thomas and Nancy’s uphill battle to have a baby is both fascinating and touching. They are a normal couple who wanted a family, and yet the circumstances surrounding their desire to get pregnant and their journey to get there are truly extraordinary.

Labor of Love is much more than the story of a unique pregnancy and birthit’s a beautiful and controversial love story, a story of going against the tide, and a powerful and important statement about the evolution of family in the new millennium.