主角有兩個名字，出生證明文件上是Calliope Helen Stephanides，但駕照上卻是Cal Helen Stephanides。 故事開始於Calliope Stephanides家族，他們從一個小鄉鎮旅行到美國的一個美麗汽車城市–底特律，因為要了解名字為何從Callie變成Cal，主角要揭開所不為人知的家族秘密。
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Patoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974…my birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s…records my first name simple as Cal. So begins The breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek- American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and The race riots 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has To uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie Into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.