Lefty and Desdemona must flee the Turks who are invading their crumbling city in the Ottoman Empire, and decide to head for America. What this unusual brother and sister do not realise is that a rare genetic mutation is following them. It secretly travels with them first to Detroit, and then to suburbia, through prohibition and the race riots of 1967. And in the spring of 1974, their granddaughter Calliope finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. Through eight decades - and one unusually awkward adolescence - Jeffrey Eugenides` long-awaited second novel is a breathtaking vision of the American Dream and a modern fable of crossed bloodlines, immigration, the intricacies of gender, and deep, untidy desire.