From the author of The Virgin Suicides comes a multi-faceted tale of a family's identity, spanning 80 years and two continents. Recounted through the eyes of grandson Calliope "Cal" Stephanides, this modern Greek epic begins around the time of the fall of Smyrna in 1922, when siblings Desdemona and Eleutherios "Lefty" must abandon their ancestral village for the New World, specifically Henry Ford's Detroit. With humor and insight, the reader follows three generations of the Stephanides family through speakeasy proprietorship to their son Milton's interstate Herculean Hotdog empire of the 1970s. This is not just a story about food or being Greek, but rather a gentle morality tale about how the consequences of choices have lasting effects, generation after generation.

Reviewed by Lydia L., Main Library

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