A new memoir about identity, paternity, and family secrets--a real-time exploration of the staggering discovery Shapiro recently made about her father, and her struggle to piece together the hidden story of her own life.
What makes us who we are? What combination of memory,
history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul
defines us?
In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to
which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro
received the stunning news that her father was not her biological
father. She woke up one morning and her entire history--the life she had
lived--crumbled beneath her.
Inheritance is a book about
secrets--secrets within families, kept out of shame or
self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of
love. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of
her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for
more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and
compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. 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.
Timely and unforgettable, Dani Shapiro's memoir is a gripping, gut-wrenching exploration of genealogy, paternity, and love.
