When Chicagoan Russell Stone signs on to teach a Creative Nonfiction class, he encounters a young woman from war-torn Algeria with an inexplicably luminous presence. Dubbed Miss Generosity by her classmates, Thassadit Amazwar's blissful exuberance puzzles the melancholic Russell. College counselor Candace Weld also falls under the girl's spell. Then Thassa's joyful personality comes to the attention of the notorious geneticist, Thomas Kurton, whose research leads him to announce the genotype for happiness. Russell and Candace, now lovers, fail to protect Thassa from the growing media circus. Devoured by the public as a living prophecy, her genetic secret will transform both Russell and Kurton, as well as the country at large.

Richard Powers is the author of nine novels. The Echo Maker won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Powers has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in Illinois.