Terry Bisson

"Tallahatchie Bridge": With those two simple words, the powerful images of a lost innocence, a murky river and a mysterious suicide spring to mind. Scorning the demands of her overbearing family, Bobbie Lee Hartley and Billy Joe McAllister meet at their usual Choctaw Ridge trysting place and attempt to consumate their forbidden love. Ode attempts to reconcile modern moralites with a tradition-bound faith, and asks whether it's possible to commit a sin against a religion that won't even have you as a member.

The Singing Biologist is a sexy musical about a charismatic young jazz singer who mixes music with science to explore the boundaries of love--with a biologist, a Brother, and a boy wonder. Rose prepares her biggest show for a prestigious theater and recruits biologist Shandra to join her troupe. Shandra's smitten colleague Dana insinuates himself into the bargain by supplying the band with music he's composed from DNA. In a heady dance to the opening curtain Rose meets Brother Hugh, a biology and ethics teacher, in an online chat room and they blithely launch an experiment in romantic tragedy; the theater management plots against Rose's company; and the lives and loves of her colleagues play to the insistent backbeat of human nature. This unprecedented feature takes an intellectual twist, ambitiously wringing ethics, religion, science, and love into an inquisitive romance that puts flesh on the premise: It takes a rockin' scientist to sing a modern love song.