Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
You know those $99 DNA kits where you spit in something, pop it in a mailer and then wait for the results to find out if your grandfather was telling the truth when he always said he was 1/16 Cherokee which would make your mother 1/32 so you should be 1/64? Which is going to be about the most exciting thing you could learn since your family trees go back several hundred years and what else could there be to know other than that you have a lot of the basic European migratory countries in your system? Dani Shapiro had one of those kits and followed the instructions as outlined; waited for her results and then found out her uber observant Jewish father who had lovingly raised her but died tragically in a car accident when she was but 23 wasn't actually her biological father. Which makes her half-sister not her half-sister and also makes a lot of sense about why Shapiro, with her blonde hair and blue eyes, has felt all these years as an 'other'... not of.. a saltine in a matzo world.
Shapiro is a 'serial memoirist' but this is the first book of hers I've read (and in all fairness I listened Shapiro herself read it on libro.fm*) so I don't know much else about her except that she was raised as an only child in a New York Orthodox Jewish community with absolutely no doubt that she herself was Jewish. Until she found out, at age 54, that she was only half. By the time her DNA results come back, her parents are long dead so there are no answers for the multitude of questions that she has. One late night conversation with her mother comes back to her though: in it, her mother mentions offhandedly that Shapiro was conceived in Philadelphia. The conversation only lasted a few brief minutes, but te memory of it immediately resurfaces when her test results come back.
When they do, they include just enough information to give Shapiro, in what seems like a matter of hours, a pretty good handle on who her biological father might be. Ah, the wonders of the internet. She reaches out to him, a tentative correspondence begins, halts, then begins again. As a young medical student donating sperm in Pennsylvania, the last thing this now retired doctor in Washington state (and his loving family) ever expected was progeny turning up at his door. Shapiro is amazingly respectful of his feelings and his privacy. The bigger puzzle for her is whether or not her parents knew when they began going to the infertility clinic in Philly, during and after her conception and birth, that the clinic would be mixing her father's semen with that of donors. Of course, they are not around to ask so it is to other family members, community rabbis, even other physicians who were involved in the pioneering days of artificial insemination that she turns to for input. I won't divulge the answer she ultimately comes away with.
I found Dani's writing to be almost lilting, she tackles a pretty heartbreaking subject with such grace and poise that as the reader I found myself wanting to emulate her. I definitely will be picking up more of her books and tuning into her new podcast- Family Secrets*- in which she shares the back story of her book along with stories from guests who have uncovered their own hidden stories. One of my favorite podcasts, the Happier* podcast with Gretchen Rubin and sister Elizabeth Craft, recently picked Inheritance as the first book for their Happier Podcast Book Club and did a wonderful interview with Dani. *Links to both podcasts at the bottom.
Book Clubbers alert: this would be a fantastic pick for discussion. It raises so many questions of a personal nature and moral and ethical as well. It sinks deep into the psyche and will pluck at the heartstrings singing 'what if?' 'could it be?' and of course, 'what would I do? how would I feel?' It wouldn't be divisive, but it would trigger great conversation about a modern, some might say trending topic (over 12 million people have now tested their DNA) that might not always turn up the cornerstones one is expecting.
https://www.familysecretspodcast.com/
https://gretchenrubin.com/podcast-episode/212-dani-shapiro-inheritance
*and if you want to support independent bookstores while you listen, visit our audiobook site at https://libro.fm/downtownbooks
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