Being donor conceived, and making that discovery at the age of 54, shoots to the top of my list of my ‘what makes me, me’ list. LL: If you were introduced to someone for the first time today, and they said, “Tell me about yourself,” how would you answer?ĭS: It’s a fascinating conundrum to have your very sense of your own identity and where you come from, shift in the middle of your life.

The Helm spoke with Dani, who lives in Connecticut with her husband and has a college-age son, about these questions and more.

The book raises fundamental questions about identity, secrecy, and our quest to discover our place in the world. In just a few days of internet sleuthing she was able to piece together the story of her parents infertility, the renegade doctor who treated them in the 60s, and remarkably, find a video of her biological father whose face and mannerisms were eerily similar to her own.Īt times it’s easy to forget that Inheritance is nonfiction because the story has the richness and pacing of a great novel. Then she took a mail order genetic test on a whim and within a few weeks her entire personal history unraveled. Raised as an only child in an Orthodox Jewish family, Dani had always viewed her father, Paul, who died when she was in her 20s, as a flawed but loving force who offered a respite from her emotionally abusive mother. Inheritance, by Dani Shapiro, is the stranger-than-fiction story of the author’s discovery, at age 54, that she was not biologically related to her beloved father.

Inheritance novel by dani shapiro