Dani Shapiro's memoir is about a 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. It unfolds at a breakneck pace—part mystery, part real-time investigation, part rumination on the ineffable combination of memory, history, biology, and experience that makes us who we are. Inheritance is a devastating and haunting interrogation of the meaning of kinship and identity, written with stunning intensity and precision.

Readers have made the book an instant bestseller, and critics rave:

“A meditation on what it means to live in a time when secrecy, anonymity, and mystery are vanishing.” — The New Yorker

“Shapiro is skilled at spinning her personal explorations into narrative gold.” — NPR

“As compulsively readable as a mystery novel, while exploring the deeper mysteries of identity and family and truth itself…a story told with great insight and honesty and heart.” — San Francisco Chronicle