Inheritance: A Memoir Of Genealogy, Paternity, And Love

Inheritance: A Memoir Of Genealogy, Paternity, And Love

An Instant NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA LOS ANGELES TIMES, BOSTON GLOBE, WALL STREET JOURNAL, and NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLERNamed A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by *Elle * Vanity Fair * Wired * Real Simple *?irkus Reviews *?ookPage *?Memoir gold: a profound and exquisitely rendered exploration of identity and the true meaning of family.? -People Magazine?Beautifully written and deeply moving-it brought me to tears more than once.?-Ruth Franklin, The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the acclaimed, best-selling memoirist, novelist and host of the hit podcast?amily Secrets, comes? memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test: an exploration of the urgent ethical questions surrounding fertility treatments and DNA testing, and a profound inquiry of paternity, identity, and love.In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had casually submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. Over the course of a single day, her entire history-the life she had lived-crumbled beneath her.???nheritance?s a book about secrets. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that had been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in, a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.???ani Shapiro?s memoir unfolds at a breakneck pace-part mystery, part real-time investigation, part rumination on the ineffable combination of memory, history, biology, and experience that makes us who we are.Inheritance is a devastating and haunting interrogation of the meaning of kinship and identity, written with stunning intensity and precision.ReviewNew York Times?ditors' ChoiceA Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Washington Post, Vulture, Bustle, Real Simple, PopSugar, and LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2019?[An] engrossing, compassionate memoir.... As in the best writing on the self, the point is the integrity of her search.? -Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker ??The writing is that of a true storyteller who will not stop until she has bored down to the bottom of where she came from, and in this she is at her narrative best.? -Oprah Magazine ??As compulsively readable as a mystery novel, while exploring the deeper mysteries of identity and family and truth itself... a story told with great insight and honesty and heart.? -San Francisco Chronicle?A meditation on what it means to live in a time when secrecy, anonymity, and mystery are vanishing.??The New Yorker ??Shapiro is skilled at spinning her personal explorations into narrative gold.? -NPR ??[A] swift moving narrative of profound personal disorientation. Just as you think you?ve crested the big reveal, Shapiro builds more tension, chapter by short chapter; she keeps you close as she feels her way through unfamiliar terrain.? -Newsday ??Inheritance zooms in on the blind spots that result when reproductive technology outpaces an understanding of its consequences. In viewing this important and timely topic through a highly personal lens, Inheritance succeeds admirably.? -The Seattle Times ??Inheritance offers a thought-provoking look at the shifting landscape of identity.? -The Washington Post ??[Shapiro] has an intimate, ruminating style, leaping associatively through time, addressing the reader not as an audience, or voyeur, but more as an interlocutor, thoughtfully answering the questions she thinks someone might ask, if they lived in her head.? -Bookforum ??Inheritance is dedicated ?to my father?. That [Shapiro] doesn?t say which one speaks volumes: those who like to insist that blood is always thicker than water should read her book, and let their own hearts slowly and