The family unit is integral to deciding how to create one’s own personal identity. Not only is it significant with regard to sociocultural background and beliefs, but it also lays the foundation for how one chooses to define oneself. The protagonist, Cal, defines himself as much as a part of his family as he does against it: These differing experiences help him come to terms with his identity as well as his family history. Without Cal, the family’s story of immigration, ancestral decisions, and personal evolution would have no narrator.

No one can escape genetics. The narrator is clear about this from the beginning: “I was born twice: first as a baby girl […] in January of 1960, and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petosky, Michigan, in August of 1974” (3). This dual birth is both a story about a phoenix rising from his own ashes and a tale about delivering oneself from history. His grandparents aren’t “typical” immigrants by most measures; in escaping war and the devastation of their village, they realize that they’re irrevocably bound to each other. Although they’re brother and sister, they marry on their journey to the new world, and later have two children.