Book Review: Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro had been questioned her whole life about her ethnicity. With blond hair and blue eyes, even though her parents were Orthodox Jews, people had told her from the time she was a baby that she couldn’t be Jewish. And then in her mid-50s she received the shock of her life after taking a DNA test. This is the story told in her memoir Inheritance.

Shapiro took the over-the-counter DNA test on a whim at the request of her husband. When the tests come back, she compares it with a test her half-sister and discovers that her father is not her biological father. Shapiro is quickly able to figure out who her biological father is through the test results, the Internet, and some help from an acquaintance who is active in genealogy.

The mystery of how she was conceived continues to come into focus as she remembers a conversation with her mother many years before. This opens up the world of infertility treatment of the 1960s and it is here that much of the book remains. Though she is able to figure out how she was likely conceived, she is left to understand the implications of this knowledge.

Shapiro taps into the few people that are still alive who may have had knowledge of what happened when she was conceived, including doctors, family, and others who knew her parents who are both dead. She longs to know if her beloved father…