Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro discusses "Inheritance"

From the acclaimed, best-selling memoirist and novelist comes a memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test.

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.

Dani Shapiro is the best-selling author of the memoirs “Hourglass”, “Still Writing”, “Devotion”, and “Slow Motion”, and five novels including “Black & White” and “Family History”.

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