Transsexual autobiographies often focus on the individual's struggle to integrate mind and body to achieve wholeness, but tend to gloss over the actual surgical experience, relegating information about a very important physical, psychological, and spiritual period in one's life to a few vague pages or paragraphs. THE FINEST CUT helps to fill that void of information with a detailed account of the experiences of one male-to-female transsexual as she goes through the surgical process. Beginning a few weeks before surgery and continuing through the recuperation period afterwards, she relates the preparations, experiences, thoughts, feelings, and physical, psychological and spiritual changes that she found occurring in herself and observed in others. This wonderful narrative covers such usually unspoken-of things as: pre and post-operative feelings of loss, the psychological/spiritual life re-assessments that many pre-ops seem to make before surgery, the bonding that can occur between SRS candidates, hospital procedures, the surgery itself (explained in lay terms), physiological and emotional experiences that can occur following surgery, pain management strategies, post-surgical hygiene, dilation procedures, experiences with long-term recuperation care, and some of the emotional and spiritual perception shifts that might result. Also included is a section of frequently asked questions and a personal view of what transsexual existence is. This memoir flows in an easily readable fashion that is filled with information, anecdotes, and humor. It is a "must read" for anyone who is thinking about having sexual reassignment surgery or who wants to know more about it. OTHER BOOKS BY JEAN CHURCHILL: Courting The Selkie; It's Not What You Think