While Richard Powers's stories are often complex (The Gold Bug Variations, for example, weaves Bach's music, the science of DNA and Poe's "The Gold Bug" into a love story spanning decades), their very human characters and settings push his encyclopedic knowledge into the background.
One of his more accessible and satisfying novels, Orfeo is the story of Peter Els, a divorced composer, retired professor and amateur chemist. Els is a 20th-century Orpheus on his own journey through a modern American Hades, seeking not only to reconnect with his former wife and estranged daughter, but also to create an eternal score of the music of the universe.
Orfeo begins with Els tinkering in a home lab trying to embed his last unwritten score into modified DNA strands where it can replicate forever. When he mistakenly calls 911 after his dog suffers a heart attack, the responding officers discover a disconcerted professor with a house full of strange chemistry books and Petri dishes of bacteria, and his perceived threat level immediately rises. As he flees to a friend's remote summer cabin, Homeland Security's pursuit of the "Bioterrorist Bach" goes viral.
Full of Powers's explication of the history and technical nuances of music, Orfeo is also the story of a "naïve and misguided" man's life. In a virtuoso performance, Powers roams as easily through modern technology as he does through arcane opera. His language, humor and sheer exuberance make this modern tale of Orpheus as fresh as the latest Al Jazeera cellphone video. With Powers's history of winning awards, it would be no surprise to see Orfeo on the 2014 National Book Award shortlist. It's a stunning novel. --Bruce Jacobs