Inheritance

I love a book with family secrets, and Shapiro’s is staggering.

She discovered this shocker through a random DNA test, which many people are doing now, never expecting to have their lives ripped apart from the results. Shapiro’s definitely was.

Her honesty and exquisite prose grabbed my heart. This memoir will make you contemplate your own identity and your belief of what makes one a parent, and what makes a family. As I enjoy doing in my own writing, this story had me exploring what should and should not be kept secret. So many will identify with Dani Shapiro’s story,… show more.

Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance tells the story of learning late in life that she was conceived by a sperm donor and that her father was not her biological father. It’s a gripping lyrical memoir about loss of identity the author experiences from learning the truth about her conception.

As a single mom by choice who conceived my son through sperm donation, it illustrated the importance of telling my son the truth about his origins from the beginning, and the need for all modern families who conceive children with donor eggs or sperm to be honest with their children about their conception. 

Shapiro’s memoir details her shocking discovery that her beloved father was not her father, and the agonizing process of reevaluating her sense of self and identity in her 50s.

Uncovering family secrets and finding deeper connections with the people around us are also themes in her recent novel, Signal Fires. I’ve always believed that family history is a huge determinant of character, identity, and the types of relationships we form, and that uncovering that history leads to better understanding of others and forgiveness of each other’s flaws. 

I was drawn to Inheritance by my own questions about paternity.

Dani’s discovery through a consumer DNA test, resembles my own story, thinking my dad was someone else and discovering through DNA he was not. Dani’s love for her father who raised her, not her DNA father, falls into my belief that you can create family without DNA.

As a mother of two adopted children from Kazakhstan, I believe love can create families. Dani explores family secrets, culture, and the age-old question of nature vs. nurture which resonated with my own search for my biological father.

Like DNA, I can’t keep a secret…until I picked up Inheritance, I had never read a memoir. I learned about the book from a friend in my DNA support group who raved about it. The author took a DNA test on a whim and suddenly found the bottom falling out of her world as she knew it. She became a detective as she followed clues and uncovered a long-kept sperm donor family secret. The author writes candidly about her struggles, questions the DNA test results raised, and meeting her biological father. Written in lyrical prose, Dani Shapiro invites you… show more.

What excites me about this book is the way that Dani Shapiro spins a shocking discovery about her genealogy--that her father is not her biological father--into a moving story about family secrets and the meaning of identity. She has written earlier memoirs, which are also great, but what she believed about who she was is shattered in this one and beautifully explored. When I read it, I thought, This could happen to any of us.