In the spring of 2016 Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. Months earlier, on a whim, she had submitted her DNA to a genealogy website for analysis. The results were astonishing, and revealed that everything she had believed about her life had been a lie. Shapiro's parents were no longer alive. With no one to turn to, and only a handful of figures on a webpage, Shapiro set out to discover the truth about herself and her identity. Inheritance is a genetic detective story; a memoir that reads like a thriller. It is a book about family secrets kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in, where science and technology have outpaced both medical ethics and the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.
