In love with a woman but afraid of what might happen at the moment of truth, Cal Stephanides decides to reveal a secret. Cal has lived as both a man and a woman. It all began in 1922, when Cals grandparents escape to America after the war. Calliope is born and seems destined to embody the legend of those girls who become men upon reaching a certain age. And so begins this novel, which spans eight decades of a familys history and is a hugely ambitious attempt at writing the Great American Novel.