The Seattle Times - Nicole Brodeur
Smith came across the story after moving to Colorado in 2016. He had a cousin who transitioned and was always fascinated by what transgender people went through to be their true selves. Trinidad had given him a place to find answers through telling Biber and Bowers’ stories, but also those of some of their patients.
High Country News - Claire Rudy Foster
As a record of institutionalized perspectives on transgender people and the dominant beliefs concerning us at the time, Trinidad is indispensable. In a world that demeans, dehumanizes and discriminates against trans people, it is the story of a doctor who offered them a sense of ownership over their bodies. Ultimately, it’s a brutal telling—hard to read, though vital to hear.
San Francisco Chronicle - Anisse Gross
Between 1969 and 2010, the small town of Trinidad, Colo., saw nearly 6,000 medical pilgrims pass through, seeking gender-affirming surgery from Dr. Stanley Biber and then successor Marci Bowers. This tiny spot played such a pivotal role, the phrase ‘going to Trinidad' became a euphemism for the surgery itself. Martin J. Smith, an award-winning journalist and former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine who also has penned five crime novels and four nonfiction books, brings this overlooked chapter to life, structuring the book around the lives of two of Biber’s patients: Claudine Griggs and Walt Heyer…The history Smith uncovers in this book is essential.
The Denver Post - Sandra Dallas
Smith’s story is a sensitive look at the pain and despair of transgender men and women. They have trouble finding jobs, are ostracized by family and friends, and some commit suicide… ‘Going to Trinidad’ is a groundbreaking work on sexual dysphoria and Colorado’s place in treating it.
Los Angeles Review of Books
Fortunately, we now have an expert account of Biber’s work and life from the former Los Angeles journalist and editor Martin J. Smith. Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads functions as a biography on multiple levels: of Biber, of Trinidad, and of those who arrived to receive the surgery, primarily male to female. All of them are complicated subjects that defy easy categorization. And all of them live up to Smith’s opening words: ‘The best stories are about people who find themselves at a crossroads. They face a critical choice, and the choice they make in that crucible moment tells us who they are.’…Smith holds steadfastly to a nonjudgmental tone, acknowledging the courage and hardship that accompanied so many people on their journey to Trinidad, but also making the scientific record plain that surgery is not a cure-all for the unhappiness that can haunt trans people who feel they were misassigned. He walks readers through the thicket of academic literature on gender dysphoria, the sense of internal alienation.
