I was born twice: first as a baby girl on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; & then again as a teenage boy in an emergency room near Petoskey Michigan in August of l 974.. . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent drivers license.. .records my first name simply as Cal. So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides & three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition era Detroit witnessing its glory days as the Motor City & the race riots of l 967 before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Point Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls she has to uncover a guilty family secret & the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal one of the most audacious & wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical & thrilling Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.