What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?

In 2016, celebrated writer and memoirist Dani Shapiro took a genetic test on a whim, believing that she knew her history well – the daughter of Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews, raised on her father’s stories of their family and ancestors. But her DNA revealed that the man she’d known as her father for her whole life was not biologically related to her. With this news, her history – and the entire life she had lived – suddenly crumbled beneath her.

Dani Shapiro is an American writer who is the author of five novels and the best-selling memoirs Inheritance, Hourglass, Slow Motion, and Devotion. She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and ELLE.