


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. She woke up one morning and her entire history-the life she had lived-crumbled beneath her. 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.

What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us? Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and LoveĪ 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.
