A Woman Like Me - Francine Rodriguez

Inspired by real-life events, this is a gritty and dark crime thriller, telling of a warrior’s journey. The traveler on this journey is an of a one-of-a-kind disconcerting individual, a transgender, and biracial woman, who is isolated, lonely, and emotionally troubled, a stranger in her own body.

Her crimes of violence are at first, life-preserving, and later become opportunistic as she fights the obstacles that fuel her fear of returning to childhood misery. Our warrior begins her journey in a notorious prison in the Philippines where she is locked up for murder at a young age, with the belief that she will not survive. She is noticed by the prison’s warden and selected to fight in the Muay Thai underground prison circuit, where prison and government officials conduct rigged fights for betting purposes.

When a promised journey outside of the Philippines allows her to leave the prison with her warden, she escapes to Bangkok, transitions sexes, and lives, and works in the district infamous for the tourist sex trade. Seeking to find her father, an ex-serviceman, she comes to the United States to begin her search. Here through misrepresentation, and overcoming countless obstacles, she becomes a police officer, and her new identity leaves her living her life in turmoil, struggling to find where she belongs in a field ruled by toxic masculinity, corruption, and cruelty. She attempts to exact justice for victimized children who have been cast aside by the system.