The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are
by Libby Copeland
Abrams Press
294 pages
Spit at your own risk. Sending in a saliva sample to consumer genetic-testing companies such as 23andMe or AncestryDNA can seem like an innocuous lark—until the results arrive, all too often revealing family secrets and setting off unexpected psychic aftershocks that can ripple throughout entire clans.
Yes, we’ve all seen the lighthearted television ad in which a man jovially shrugs off his discovery that the German ethnic identity he’d grown up with was genetically incorrect. Learning that his ancestors were instead Scots-Irish, he accommodates his new identity without missing a beat, simply trading in his lederhosen for a kilt.
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