The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us

by Carolyn Abraham

Carolyn Abraham explores the stunning power and ethical pitfalls of using genetic tests to answer questions of genealogy--by cracking the genome of her own family.
 
Recently, tens of thousands of people have been drawn to mail-order DNA tests to learn about their family roots. Abraham investigates whether this burgeoning new science can help solve 2 mysteries that have haunted her multi-racial family for more than a century. Both hinge on her enigmatic great-grandfathers--a hero who died young and a scoundrel who disappeared. Can the DNA they left behind reveal their stories from beyond the grave?
 
Armed with DNA kits, Abraham criss-crosses the globe, taking cells from relatives and strangers, a genetic journey that turns up far more than she bargained for--ugly truths and moral quandaries. With lively writing and a compelling personal narrative, The Juggler's Children tackles profound questions around the genetics of identity, race and humanity, and tells a big story about our small world, with vivid proof that genes bind us all to the branches of one family tree.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Memoir, Book Club, Canada, History, Biography

380 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2012

About the author

Carolyn Abraham is an award-winning science writer who spent 14 years as the senior medical reporter for The Globe and Mail, Canada's leading national newspaper. Her features, focusing on the intersection of science and society, have earned more than eight national awards, including four from the Canadian Science Writers Association, and two National Newspaper Awards.

Carolyn Abraham appears often as an on-air television commentator on medical issues, wrote the chapter on the SARS outbreak in Canada at the request of the World Health Organization and co-wrote the NFB production entitled DNA and Dollars. Her first book formed the basis of the National Geographic documentary on Einstein's brain that was broadcast in 14 countries. Carolyn lives in Toronto. For more information on her work please see www.carolynabraham.ca.

From Cooke Agency Website who represents Carolyn Abraham

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was an avid genealogist for several years, a while ago. Many nights I'd be up until 2 am, despite having to get up for work in only 5 hours, because I'd be "on a roll". I'd be uncovering a stream of information about newly discovered ancestors, going farther and farther back. One line even got traced back to the tenth century. The key was hitting European nobility in your lines - once you found that, you were in through the door to a rich world of intricate genealogy that was often well documented.
"Brick walls", in which no further progress could be made on a particular line, became more and more common as I exhausted the on-line sources. It was the lure of the 'Eureka!' moment that propelled me. Carolyn Abraham in this book compares this to the addicting playing of slot machines. Every once in a while you are rewarded with celebratory bells and whistles and a few coins, and this encourages you to keep playing. Nothing beat the immense satisfaction of solving a mystery. In one instance, I was able to 'find' a long-lost relative who disappeared in the 1830s, never to be seen again by his family in England. The scoundrel had absconded to Canada and set up house with a new wife and family, but the link was never found until the 21st century. The descendants of his English family were gobsmacked when we made contact. They always wondered what happened to him. Sweet.
So I really get this story. Tracing the genealogy of her own family with roots in China, Jamaica, India, England...it seems to be not possible. But Abraham is a journalist with a good science background and the requisite degree of obsessiveness. It takes many many hours of patient searching through online archives, databases, old newspapers, genealogy trees to find just snippets of relevant information. Then she started to also use the information gleaned from genetic analysis of buccal swabs of family members. Genetic genealogy has become big business in the last few years. DNA analysis sometimes helps to break down the brick walls.
This was a fascinating description of how she was able to use this technology, and its pitfalls and limitations.
But she keeps the emphasis on solving the mysteries of her family tree, and muses about the ethics of genetic digging (many people think some things are best left undisturbed; 'false paternity', is said to be about 10% -- your dad may not be your dad).
A fascinating and unusual account of what it means to be a family.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt a gust of breath and then a soft, firm tap on my crown and the damp spray of a snort. Anyone can receive the blessing of the temple pachyderm for a few rupees, which the elephants are trained to collect with their trunks. It's nearly as common as incense in south India. But at the end of that long day, near the end of a journey I once said I'd never make, in search of some connection to an ancestry I'd never known, it meant something to take part in that ancient Hindu ritual. It may have been a sacred rite to some long-forgotten ancestors, before we, like so much of the world, split from our tribes and our gods. The symbolism of the act was powerful to me all the same, maybe even spiritual on some undefinable level – to feel small and vulnerable beside this big, timeless rock, on my knees before a beast that could crush me with a sneeze – the six-tonne pet of the Kurumbas; the workhorse of the British; an icon of wisdom, memory, India, and, of course, the circus.

Here's the thing about being Canadian: We so embrace the idea of being a multicultural country, celebrating the great mosaic of nationalities that have found their homes here, that in addition to the frequent public festivals that honour this or that heritage, school kids are routinely told to write a report on interesting cultural traditions they celebrate at home, or to bring an exotic dish to school to share with the class. Having lived in Canada for many generations, mine and my husband's backgrounds combined to make a couple of Heinz 57 kids, and with one grandfather who is half Italian, my two little redheads often clung to this as the most exotic fruit on their family tree, toddling off with a pot of inauthentic spaghetti or ersatz antipasto. Having come to Canada from England in the 70s, author Carolyn Abraham encountered the same atmosphere, and when she asked her mother, “What are we anyway?”, her mother would reply, “Just say we're British. I'll make Yorkshire Pudding for your class.” Somehow, little Carolyn knew that their history was more complex than that, and when she grew up to become an investigative science journalist, she eventually endeavored to learn the truth. The Juggler's Children is the extraordinary tale of Abraham's search for her family history – through written records, emerging DNA technology, and networking with other amateur genealogists – and with clearly explained science, several trips to exotic locales, and an engaging storytelling style, Abraham unravels an intriguing, personal family tale that becomes universal to all of us.

Granted, most of us wouldn't have as provocative a jumping off point as Abraham: She was born in England, to Anglo-Indian parents who had emigrated from India not long before her birth. Neither of her parents had much information about their family trees – there might be some Portuguese in there somewhere – but each harboured a mystery. One of Abraham's great-grandfathers (on her mother's side) was a celebrated Jamaican Sea Captain who died young of beriberi, and another great-grandfather (on her father's side) was rumoured to have been a Chinese juggler (transplanted to India's hill country) who abandoned his young children when his wife died. As this was at the dawn of consumer genetic testing, Abraham started by taking cheek swabs of her relatives and uploading the results to internet databases. As matches with other users began to trickle in, what Abraham discovered would prompt correspondence with potentially new relatives and lead her and her family on trips around the world.

I had heard before of Mitochondrial Eve (the one ancestral woman who passed her mitochondrial material down to all of us through the matrilineal line), but I had never before heard of “Genetic Adam”:

Thought to have lived about 59,000 years ago, this Adam (unlike the Biblical Adam) is not cast as the first man on Earth but rather as the one man whose male descendants survived to populate the rest of the planet.

Because of the nature of the Y chromosome, males can easily have their direct patrilineal line traced back to origin groups, with the interesting caveat that even thousands of years ago, groups were mixing and interbreeding and there's no such thing as a “pure” race anywhere on earth. Abraham was able to swab direct male descendants of each of her missing great-grandfathers (an uncle and a brother), but was frustrated when she didn't get many matches with other users (and especially in the Chinese line as the technology isn't popular among the Chinese today). She was also discouraged by the lack of official information to be found about her female ancestors:

Women are relatively absent in historical paper trails. Women too rarely wrote wills or paid taxes, joined the military or owned property. More often they themselves were property.

One thing Abraham learned from her research was that roughly ten percent of users will discover that their fathers aren't their biological parent. Oops. Another thing she had to get her mind around: If your research leads you to a Jamaican sugar cane plantation, are you prepared to learn that your ancestor was a slave? Or a slave owner? Slightly off-topic because it is, coincidentally, in the news today: Due to a regulatory loophole, American companies are able to market health-risk genetic tests here in Canada, and loads of people are sending off to find out if they are predisposed to certain cancers or whatever. Just today, Parliament is discussing a bill that will prevent Life Insurance companies from discriminating against a person's results from these tests (not health insurance; this is still Canada), but the idea that you might be denied life insurance because of a known pre-existing condition might give a person pause before sending off the cheek swab (besides the potentially devastating results that the layman might have trouble interpreting; there's a reason other countries don't allow these tests for the home consumer).

Abraham has a knack for explaining the science without making this feel like a science book (and to anyone who might say that the science has evolved enough in the past few years to make this obsolete, it's still a valuable record of its own time), and also for making me care about her own personal history (until some things got a bit repetitive). Ultimately, anyone who shakes their family tree might find a few surprises tumbling out, but go back far enough, and we're all related anyway. I enjoyed this read very much.

[Candice Abraham · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say...this is one amazing read. Who knew you could get locked into the suspense of a story and actually learn some science along the way! Seriously though, I could not put this book down and devoured it over just a few days. The journey Carolyn Abraham takes us on is fascinating and coupled with Abraham's superb storytelling ability, I found myself just turning page after page until I was done.

I didn't realize how much genetic knowledge we actually have now, especially as it relates to ethnicity. And I was surprised to learn exactly what kind of secrets genetic testing can actually dig up.

What I also appreciated about this book is how, through Abraham's journey, the world seems a little smaller and we're able to see more clearly the different levels we're all connected on. I also truly appreciated the way this book taught me about the histories of certain countries and the people that make them up.

But more than anything, it is Carolyn Abraham's story that drew me in, as well as her writing and her ability to drop information into the book and then come back around to refer to it again with humour and wit.

If on any level, you've ever asked yourself, who am I? Where do I really come from? Ift you want to loose yourself in a book, then The Juggler's Children is for you.

[Danusia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to remind myself from time to time that this is not a work of fiction, Carolyn Abraham proves to be a very gifted storyteller. Informative on genealogy and genetics (due to the human need of wanting not to be so lonely; while finding unexpected roots around the globe) "The Juggler's Children" is also peppered with history information of the diverse places that the author's ancestors come from - India, Jamaica, China. At times humorous or sentimental, the search for the Juggler and the Captain grandfathers and their origins makes for a very entertaining read.

[Dar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed account of the author using DNA testing to uncover family tree mysteries. I was impatient with her methods at times, and wanted to shout "Look in DOCUMENTS!" Eventually she says, "The truth wasn't written in our cells after all; it was written in ink."

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve just finished this book, The Juggler’s Children. It has certainly got the genealogist in me stirred up, wanting to get researching once again. The book gets its name from the author’s pursuit of information on her paternal great-grandfather, apparently a Chinese juggler. Although this one man gets her started, she also ends up pursuing family ties in India, England and Jamaica as well. Once research gets rolling, it can literally lead you anywhere—how much more exciting does research get?

The author, Carolyn Abraham, is a science writer who details her experience into personal genetic research combined with old fashioned interviewing of family and potential family as well as searching the paper and ink records. One of my friends asked me years ago to participate in National Geographic’s genetic project, but for some reason I was not at all interested at the time. I may have to re-visit that decision in light of this book. After all, we have some rumours of North American Indian blood in the family and there is one man in our Danish line of ancestry whose name whispers “Russian” to me. Perhaps we do have mysteries that we can tango with through DNA.

I was particularly struck by one passage in the book:
“I asked Adrian why he thought so many people—people who might never have spent a minute researching their ancestry—felt suddenly compelled to find genetic relatives. ‘We’re lonely,’ he said flatly. ‘Families are so fractured, and we’re all caught up in this rat race and in the process we kind of lost our identities. I’d much rather talk to a cousin I never knew I had than to a complete stranger. We don’t want to be so lonely anymore.’”

Shades of Kurt Vonnegut and his book Slapstick, where everyone is to be assigned a middle name: a random natural object and a random number. Anyone who shares your object is a cousin and anyone who shares the object and number is a sibling. Thus community is created. Lonesome no more!

I have spent time tracking down distant cousins. I have cold-called complete strangers with the “right” surname in ancestral areas. I remember having tea and muffins in Moncton with a very lonely elderly woman, who gratefully shared all the family information that she knew in exchange for an afternoon visit. I’ve prowled cemeteries in New Brunswick with various shirt-tail relatives, looking for the gravestone of a missing great-grandfather (we found it because a distant cousin was dating the grounds keeper of the cemetery and he consulted the plot plan for us). En route to another cemetery, I was assured by a many-times-distant cousin that “the land owner knows my car and so he won’t shoot.” I’ve been given privileged access in an archive on the say-so of a distant cousin. The bond forms quickly.
Genealogy is addictive—it is mysterious, as you use family legends as a starting point to discover the paper trail. You are always open to hearing another family story and following up any clues you may divine from it. You plan your vacations around visits to archives, libraries and burial grounds. Facts are assembled, compared, analyzed, all in an attempt to figure out where to look next. And the stories are fascinating. The people, by and large, are warm and welcoming. We really do like to talk to “cousins we never knew we had.” It’s fun to share stories and figure where the intersections are and if we are very similar or quite different and yet still Family.

The other things that strikes me about this genetic research is the extent to which we all share genetic material. No one is “pure” anything. It truly proves that racism is just chasing your own tail—completely pointless. I read in one genealogy text that if you go back 30 generations, we should each have millions of ancestors. But there weren’t that many people in all of Europe back then, so if you have European ancestors, you are not only related to royalty, but you are also connected to every swineherd.

The genetic tests are not miracles—they may just open certain research avenues and discourage us from others. But I think I may have to venture into this new game and see where my DNA takes me.

[DeB · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to recommend this outstandingly interesting book to another reader and discovered that I had not written a review when it was finished. This is such a terrific story, filled with mystery and secrets about ancestry, a search for identity and an era in India's history with Britain purposefully ignored and almost suppressed. It is also the story of DNA, the science of which tells about forbears almost as part of fairytales and the strands which can uncover answers to questions so many of us have in a world where our ancestors left little record for us to know ourselves.

The science gets a bit complex, but just skim along if that isn't your brain's forté - and it is just a small part of the book. Carolyn Abraham is a journalist, and she has written a true story that reads like a fascinating novel. Canada, though now a multi-cultural nation, was settled by Colonial powers and the British biases left a strong imprint on the country until more modern times. Skin colour and eye shape differences from the ruling class were noticed, because immigration had been very limited to those of Asian background and native aboriginals were treated as a class unto themselves. Carolyn Abraham's journey of discovery was triggered because the kids at her school wanted to know why her skin was darker than theirs. That question led to this incredible research and resolution.

Highly recommended for those who like Anglo/Indian history, family history stories, tracing ancestry, the miracle of the history in our DNA.

[Marci · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m completely bowled over by Carolyn’s expertise in her genealogical and genetic journey. In fact, this book should have the borrowed subtitle of “The Incredible Journey”, without the pets.
During the past 12-18 months I have been trying to figure out my own tree and that of my husband’s. This spring I was introduced to haplogroups and Y DNA. Nothing made sense until I read this book.
Thank you for pouring your heart, soul, and knowledge into a publication that every aspiring genealogist should read.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book told me more than I ever wanted to know about DNA, but the story of the author's family was absorbing and entertaining.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book about the author’s journey to discover her family history.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Juggler's Children is about the Canadian author's "dance between DNA and documentary evidence, science and paper" as she sets out to uncover the mysterious origins of two of her great-grandfathers, one of whom she inherited her surname from ("the juggler"). At the beginning of the book there are two family tree charts, one for the descendants of each of these great-grandfathers who married and fathered children in India but originally came from somewhere else (China and Jamaica, probably). In hindsight I should have drawn another family tree chart for the Crooks family in Jamaica as I read what her research uncovered there, as it was not so easy keeping up with the Crookses, but I was in too much of a hurry to find out what happened next. I guess it could not have been included in the book without giving too much of the story away.

Even though my 100% European ancestry is not nearly as interesting as the author's, I can identify with so much of what she wrote having similar family mysteries of my own to solve. Regardless, I am a sucker for a good detective story. I also learnt some history, geography and science in the process.

The book would also be a good primer for a "genetic virgin". It discusses genetic genealogy in layman's terms and illustrates the various pitfalls of genetic testing and analysis via the author's personal story. Her experiences demonstrate the limitations of both science and paper, and hence the value of using both to corroborate each other. Abraham is a science writer and weaved various milestones in genetics and genetic genealogy into her story. However, science has already progressed somewhat since the Abraham family undertook genetic testing. There is now greater emphasis on testing autosomal DNA inherited from both parents and the costs have dropped substantially. Pioneers of genetic genealogy are impatient, and this book gives us some perspective in that regard.

The writing style is well balanced, not too dry given the scientific subject and not overly verbose. The book contains plenty of humour, puns, metaphors and phrases that made me smile such as "typos" regarding mutations, "kiss and tell" regarding the Y chromosome and "old boys' club" regarding Y haplogroups (not having my own Y, I can really identify with that one).

[Paul Lima · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should not be the audience for this book. I can trace my family tree back to my grandparents, and then it's full stop. And I've never been inclined to look any farther. Really couldn't care less about my roots. This is a book about finding where you come from, and I found it fascinating and engaging as the author used DNA and various records to trace her ancestry. Her family lives in Mississauga, near Toronto (Canada) but they go there via England and India before that. While the author was unable to track down her father's ancestors, she was able to prove Chinese origins. She tracks her mother, who has Indian, black and English blood, five generations back -- to a slave trader living in Jamaica.

The author is a professional writer, and it shows. Her writing is crisp, focused, detailed and engaging. She tells her story, all she did to trace her roots, and her discoveries -- including blind alleys and wrong turns and false-positives, and successes and failures. You feel like you are going on the journey with her.

Various technical DNA terms are explained in simple and clear language, and how paper trail connections are made (and not made) are quite fascinating. I have not been inspired to trace my roots, but was glad to go on this author's journey. If you are tracing your roots, thinking of doing so, or just like a good mystery, I highly recommend this book. Good fun; enjoyable journey.

[Kae Emm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting read about one woman's pursuit to find out more about her family history, using genetics as the main investigative tool. This book includes fascinating personal stories and memories from the author, her family, and people they met in their journey, and a lot of rich information about history, science, and the use of modern DNA studies. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interested in these subject areas, as well as those who have an interest in genealogy. The author does a great job at shedding light on the ups and downs of exploring family history, and she takes some great lessons away from her story.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was gripped by this book, just like Carolyn Abraham's search for her ancestry gripped her. I'm just glad I got to find out the conclusions of her ancestry much faster than she did! What a lovely mix of genetics and good old fashioned genealogical research with some anthropology and history thrown in. Abraham's writing is very readable and funny at times (her challenge with the"the arrogant cows" of india had me giggling for days). Her analogies will make the the science understandable to most lay readers. I would love to see this book championed on next year's Canada reads!

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Award-winning Canadian medical writer Carolyn Abraham has a Jewish surname, parents who were both born in Indian but they are not Indian, a great-grandfather (the juggler) who looked Chinese and another great-grandfather who was a sea captain and travelled to India from Jamaica! When she and her siblings were asked "what" they were, they had not answer. It was not until Abraham's first child was born that she was adequately motivated to use new DNA technology to trace her ancestry. The search was not without challenges and ethical conundrums. Recommended.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone interested in the advancement of DNA research for the purposes of genealogical information, this is a great book to read. I learned a great deal. The story of Abraham's own family was really interesting (what was going to happen next!?) but also served as a great vehicle for learning more about the science of how we're all genetically related -- or not. Fascinating stuff. Makes me want to dig further into other similar books.

Anyone have recommendations?!

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delving into my family history has been fascinating. When I started researching my family tree in earnest, some 30 years ago, I spent long hours at the library and the Archives of Ontario, scrolling through endless reels of microfilm until my head spun.

Since then, genealogy research has been transformed by the Internet. There are increasing numbers of records available online. Today, genealogists have another new tool at their disposal: DNA, which can be used to help you confirm or rule out a relationship with a potential relative. Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has used DNA to interesting effect on several of his PBS programs, including "Finding Your Roots."

Carolyn Abraham, a medical reporter with The Globe & Mail, used DNA as well as traditional research techniques to help her untangle the mystery of her family's history, and has written a memorable book about it: "The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us."

As a child growing up in Canada, Abraham would get asked by her schoolmates -- and, in turn, ask her parents: "What are we? Where did we come from?" Simple questions -- but the answers she got were vague and complex. Abraham's last name would suggest Jewish heritage -- but she was born in England, attended Catholic schools and had brown skin. Her parents had come to Canada from India -- but her grandmother had insisted there was no Indian blood in the family (some Portuguese, perhaps?). "Anglo-Indian" and "Eurasian" were among the suggested labels. Her mother's grandfather, according to family lore, was a sea captain from Jamaica. Her father's grandfather, on the other hand, was thought to be a circus juggler who came to India from China -- possibly on the lam.

Armed with DNA testing kits (at one point, she improvises with Q-Tips), Abraham, her husband and parents travel to India & Jamaica, as well as genealogical DNA conferences, in search of their roots. DNA testing, combined with traditional research, brings Abraham some answers, some surprises (some pleasant, some less so), and even more mysteries. Some get resolved, some don't.

She delves into the science of DNA, how testing works, what it can tell us (and what it can't), in a (mostly) understandable way. Even as she researched her genealogy & wrote this book, new developments were unfolding that expanded the scope of what her family's genes could tell her.

By the time you reach the end of the book (Abraham's daughter gets the last word -- and it's a great summation), you realize that for all of us, the answer to the question "who do you think you are?" may be less definitive than we think.

Part family history, part science textbook, part history and part mystery -- I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[DaleE Boland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should like to rate this 4.5 but it seems to only allow full stars! First off, I’ll say that I picked this up in a thrift store in January and it took me all this time to get through it (now late June), but don’t let that influence my review! Carolyn Abraham is a most gifted writer and holey smokes researcher. In this non-fiction that reads partly like a historical novel and partly like a biology textbook, she makes the difficult science so readable and enjoyable that one can’t help bumping along for the ride.
Her journey through India, Jamaica, Lancashire and Mississauga, mDNA and the mysterious Y, is full of surprises and told so beautifully I want to write her and say thanks. It’s made me curious about my genetic background, being one of two daughters of one of four daughters we don’t have a Y legacy to trace. But we have our stories, our Elders’ lore and legends, and on lucky occasions, wonderful books such as The Juggler’s Children (btw, what’s not to love with a title such as that??!) to send us dreaming and wondering all the more. Recommended. Thank you Caroline, if you’re out there! And good luck with your future pursuits!

[Zoom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a genealogical memoir written by Carolyn Abraham, a Canadian journalist and science writer. She and her family are ethnically pretty mixed, and she always wondered what they were. She knew little about her ancestors, but had heard tales of Chinese circus jugglers and jamaican sea captains. She embarked on a journey with her parents to learn more, using DNA testing and research.

This is the story of that journey. If you're interested in DNA testing, this book provides lots of great information about it. It's a very puzzly sort of process, so it was helpful to see how she thought her way through it. There were some remarkable coincidences along the way too.

I'm not sure this book would be of interest to people not interested in genealogy. She does have a more interesting family than most, ethnically speaking, and she's an excellent writer, but it's still a book about barking up somebody else's family tree. Probably not everybody's cup of tea.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating story of the author's explorations into the genealogy of her family and how she used the science of DNA to try to track down their roots. Carolyn Abraham is a science journalist whose mixed heritage prompted her to try to find out the answer to the question she had been asked as a child: "What are you?"

Abraham knows her subject and is also an excellent storyteller. Although this is a non-fiction science book, it reads like a mystery thriller. Her portrayal of her family members, particularly her parents, allows the reader to become completely involved in their story.

The author learns many things about her family and about life over the course of the journey that she describes. One of the most important is proved multiple times in her research: race is just a social construct and has no real biological basis.

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really found this a struggle to read at times. The science was far too complex at times and all the names and relationships were convoluting as well. I was glad that Abraham put the family trees at the front of the book. I actually copied them as my book mark, so I was able to keep the immediate family members straight in my mind. I wish I had kept track of all of the digressions from this immediate tree on the family tree - then I might have gotten so lost at times.

The DNA science, as in all science, is quickly out-of-date. It is now 2017 and I wonder how many markers they can read now and how accurate they can predict ethnicity and ancestry today?

I really did enjoy finding out about her great-grandfathers and the worlds that they lived in - both in India and Jamaica. The history lesson was great - in fact that part read like a novel, while the rest was far more like a textbook.

As a family biography, it was interesting.

[Cybercrone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. The mysteries on both sides of the family and the search for answers kept me glued to the book.
The science too, was fascinating, especially how much it changed and improved just during the time she was doing her search. And she explained it well.
One thing that struck me though, was that when one of her uncles didn't seem to match the family, her first (and only, ever) thought was that her beloved grandmother must have had an affair, rather than that she may have been raped by a family friend who greatly admired her and was living with the family.
Well worth reading if the subject interests you at all.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abraham is a science journalist for the Globe and Mail. She embarked on a journey to gain more information on her diverse ancestral background. The collection of DNA samples was one of the tools she used aside from researching archives which she hoped would help solve some of her family’s questions. The book was an interesting exploration of how far science has advanced and how the tools used can provide some interesting and perhaps surprising answers. The book was informative as well as entertaining and interesting as she shared her story with her readers.

[Allison Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best word I can use to describe this book is “meaty.” I really enjoyed it, but I felt like it took me far longer than a 350 page book typically would. If you’re into DNA or genealogy, this book is for you. The author has two interesting and mysterious great-grandfathers, and she uses new DNA technology to learn more about them. It seems like it must have been a slow process in real time, but she ends up learning quite a bit. I wonder if she’s learned much more in the 10 or 12 years since she wrote this book, with all the new technology and new populations being tested.

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was way too much history in this. Sorry, but I was interested in the DNA mystery, not so much in the details of what was happening in India at the time. I got lost in the history, and it made this a less than engrossing read for me.

I do understand that historical events shape us - but this combination didn't particularly appeal, nor was it presented in such a way that I was so hooked on the story that I couldn't put it down. I could not only put it down, I could also walk away. And I did.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and devoured it in 2 days. Following the DNA leads to discoveries about the author's family, including India, Jamaica, and maybe even a trip to China. Questions were raised like, if your great grandfather assumed a new name in a new country, what does that mean to the current generation? DNA testing is referred to as a Western European hobby, many people in England or other origin countries know where they come from and have no interest in DNA testing.

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't finish this one. I love the science behind it, and she is an excellent author. But she lost me halfway through. The story lost momentum and I was just not reaching to read my book at the end of the day. I had to file it away. Will try again in the future when life is a little less chaotic.

[Kathleen McRae · Rating 5 out of 5]

So Good I loved the history and the descriptions of places and I loved the writing.I also love learning a few new things along the way and this book supplied that in spades I loved the unfolding of this story as most life stories go with some wrinkles that need to be ironed out and some that are permanent.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

genealogy + DNA science
First third of book is fascinating then begins to drag with author's personal long search

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read if you are into genealogy, especially genetic genealogy. I wish my ancestry were as interesting as hers!