This compilation is comprised of the selections of 22 poets, novelists, and essayists who were asked to contemplate the leading characters in the first book of the Bible. They are interested in the correlation between God's creativity, the imaginative resources of Genesis, and their own engagement with the mysteries of life. Arthur Miller tries to puzzle out the riddles of the story of Adam and Eve. Phillip Lopate ponders the way Abraham and Sarah keep crossing the boundary between spouse and sibling. James Carroll mines the meaning of Abraham's spiritual odyssey for hints about his own career as a writer. And Kathleen Norris examines the story of Rebekah as a meditation upon motherhood.