Lefty and Desdemona flee their burning village in Turkey as Greek forces are routed and the Turkish army advances.

Lefty, Desdemona, and Dr. Philobosian board a ship for the United States by pretending to be French citizens without passports.

Lefty and Desdemona secretly marry and consummate their union as siblings aboard the ship bound for America.

Jimmy Zizmo drives his car across thin river ice and disappears into the water after convincing himself Sourmelina has been unfaithful.

Desdemona gives birth to a healthy baby boy named Milton, and Lefty later opens the Zebra Room speakeasy.

Desdemona realizes that the arrested fraud Minister Fard is actually Jimmy Zizmo alive, and he claims to know all the family's secrets.

Milton enlists in the Navy in heartbroken anger after discovering that Tessie has accepted Father Mike's marriage proposal.

Milton is recalled to the Naval Academy instead of serving as signalman; after the war he and Tessie marry.

Calliope Helen Stephanides is born in January 1960, and Lefty suffers a stroke the same night that permanently robs him of speech.

The Detroit race riots destroy the Stephanides family diner, and Calliope rides her bicycle into the chaos to rescue her father.

With insurance money from the destroyed diner, Milton moves the family to the house on Middlesex Boulevard in the suburbs.

Calliope falls in love with a wealthy classmate she calls the Obscure Object at her all-girls private school.

Emergency room doctors discover Calliope's unique biology after she is injured fleeing the Obscure Object's enraged brother.

Cal runs away from the New York hotel after secretly reading Dr. Luce's report, which concealed that surgery would eliminate sexual sensation.

Milton dies in a multi-car crash on a bridge while chasing Father Mike, who staged a fake kidnapping to extort ransom money.

Pool 1 traces the most pivotal events driving the Stephanides story, beginning with Lefty and Desdemona's flight from war-torn Turkey and their secret marriage aboard a ship bound for America. Their forbidden union plants a genetic inheritance that will shape future generations, as Milton and Tessie fall in love against family opposition and the backdrop of World War II. Calliope is born into a Detroit immigrant household, only for the city's race riots to upend the family's fortunes and push them toward suburban reinvention. As Calliope reaches adolescence, alarming physical changes and a passionate first love collide in a crisis that lands her in an emergency room, where doctors make a startling discovery. Cal's escape from a New York specialist sets him on a westward road of self-invention, while back in Detroit the family fractures under the pressure of his disappearance. The saga ends in tragedy when Milton is killed chasing the man whose fake kidnapping scheme exploited a father's desperate love for his missing child.

The headline moments of the Stephanides multigenerational saga.

Desdemona attempts to find suitable village girls for Lefty to marry, hoping to prevent him from leaving for the city.

Dr. Philobosian returns home in Smyrna to find his entire family massacred despite his letter of protection from the Turkish leader.

Sourmelina agrees to keep Lefty and Desdemona's sibling secret because she harbors her own secret as a lesbian.

Lefty is dismissed from his job at the Ford Motor Company because of Jimmy Zizmo's criminal police record.

Lefty and Jimmy run a bootleg liquor operation during Prohibition, intercepting boats carrying Canadian whiskey across the water at night.

Desdemona works at the Nation of Islam's Detroit temple, teaching the sisters to raise silkworms for silk production.

Desdemona undergoes a surgical procedure to prevent any future pregnancies, ending her intimate life with Lefty for good.

Desdemona intervenes in Milton's courtship of Tessie by introducing Tessie to seminary student Mike Antoniou at a family dinner.

Tessie watches wartime newsreels at the movie theater, convinces herself she glimpses Milton, and resolves to break off her engagement to Father Mike.

Lefty secretly gambles away all the family's savings, and he and Desdemona are forced to move in with Milton and Tessie.

Lefty suffers a catastrophic stroke while watching Calliope and her friend Clementine play in the backyard bathhouse, ending his mobility.

Milton founds the Hercules Hot Dogs restaurant chain, transforming the family's fortunes and propelling them into the upper middle class.

Calliope begins exploring her own sexuality alone in the basement bathroom of her all-girls private school.

Cal takes a job performing as Hermaphroditus at Bob Presto's adult club in San Francisco, displaying his unique anatomy to paying audiences.

Cal returns to Detroit and visits Desdemona, who studies him carefully before declaring that her silver spoon prediction was correct all along.

Pool 2 covers significant moments often overshadowed by the main plot, beginning with Desdemona's early matchmaking schemes and the family's covert arrangements upon arriving in Detroit. Lefty's dismissal from the Ford Motor Company and his descent into bootlegging and gambling reveal the grinding pressures of the immigrant experience, while Desdemona's time at the Nation of Islam's temple and her eventual surgical decision show the private battles she fought against her own guilt. As Milton and Tessie's generation comes of age, Tessie's dramatic change of heart over Father Mike and Lefty's financial ruin set the stage for the family's reinvention through the Hercules Hot Dogs chain. Calliope's adolescence brings private sexual awakening and the dawning awareness of ethnic otherness at her private school before Cal's journey through San Francisco's margins becomes a strange path toward self-acceptance. The pool closes with Cal's emotional homecoming, confirmed by Desdemona's declaration that her old silver spoon was right all along.

The supporting events that shaped each generation of the Stephanides family.

Lefty confesses to Desdemona that he wants to marry her rather than any of the village girls she has arranged for him.

Desdemona agrees to marry Lefty only on the condition that both of them survive the Turkish army's advance on Smyrna.

Dr. Philobosian mentions at a family dinner that most birth defects result from intermarriage, frightening Desdemona into terrified silence.

Desdemona and Sourmelina simultaneously realize they are both pregnant after attending a play about the Minotaur together.

Father Mike asks Milton's sister Zoe to dance at Milton and Tessie's wedding reception, beginning a relationship that leads to their marriage.

Milton takes over the declining Zebra Room and converts it into a family diner after Lefty's stroke sidelines him.

Calliope's baptism takes an unexpected turn when the infant urinates and strikes Father Mike in the face during the ceremony.

Calliope experiences alarming puberty changes including a dramatic growth spurt, a deepening voice, and the growth of facial hair instead of female development.

Calliope plays the role of Tiresias in a school production of Antigone, but a classmate suffers a fatal aneurysm onstage before the play can begin.

Jerome discovers Calliope and the Obscure Object together in the hammock and chases Calliope away with threats and insults.

Calliope looks up medical terms in a library dictionary and discovers that 'hermaphrodite' is defined with 'monster' listed as a synonym.

Cal is violently assaulted by men who invade the Golden Gate Park camp and discover the secret of his anatomy.

Bob Presto's adult club is raided by local police, forcing Cal to call home for the first time after months of silence.

Desdemona confesses to Cal that Lefty was her biological brother, asking Cal to keep the secret until after her death.

Cal skips Milton's funeral and instead stands guard in the Middlesex doorway following the old Greek tradition, helping his father's spirit ascend.

Pool 3 focuses on the charged moments of revelation and decision that alter the course of the story. Beginning with Lefty's confession of love for his own sister and Desdemona's conditional agreement to marry, the pool charts the consequences of that original transgression as it ripples forward through the generations. Key revelations — an offhand dinner comment about intermarriage, simultaneous pregnancies, and an unexpected marital pairing — show how fate and secrecy intertwine to shape each new generation. Calliope's adolescence is defined by disorienting physical changes, a passionate first love, and the violent exposure that triggers a harrowing medical examination in New York. The pool then follows Cal's reckoning with his own identity through a library dictionary's cruel synonym, a brutal assault in a San Francisco park, and a police raid that forces him back into contact with his family. The story closes with Desdemona's final deathbed confession and Cal's quiet, dignified act of ancestral devotion at the threshold of the family home.

The decisions, discoveries, and emotional turning points that reshape the story.