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Inheritance


⭐⭐⭐/5

New York Times best seller 
“A gripping genetic detective story, and a meditation on the meaning of parenthood and family.” (Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan Beach)
A Washington Post, Vulture, Bustle, Real Simple, PopSugar, and LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2019 and an Apple Books Best of January 2019
From the acclaimed, best-selling memoirist and novelist - “a writer of rare talent” (Cheryl Strayed) - a 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. 
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 an audiobook 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 50 years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is an audiobook 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."

I had the pleasure of listening to this one twice.  Once solo during walks and car commutes and once with my husband on a car trip to Florida for Spring Break vacation.  Ms. Shapiro tells a heartbreaking story that caused me such pause to wonder what i would have done, how I would have felt should I have encountered the same circumstances.  She writes beautifully of how she arrives at her coming to terms with the truth of the story and how she finds place for both her father and her biological father.  Her husband Michael is the grounding force needed in each of our lives as we go through emotions of our family.  So much of how she perceives her family took place long before they were together, yet he so gently allows her to feel without wallow in the outcome.  Beautifully done!

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