"Inheritance" by Dani Shapiro

"A memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love"
    Dani Shapiro grew up in a Jewish Orthodox family.  Her grandparents had been pillars of the Jewish community and Dani loved her Jewish father. 
Quote: "I had a powerful, nearly romantic sense of my family and its past".
     But, at 54, her husband was researching his family history and decided to send away for a DNA kit.  On the spur of the moment, Dani decided to also send her saliva sample.  What she discovered completely devastated her.  Her father was not really her father!  Both of Dani's parents were dead, as well as the

Dani and her Jewish father.

rest of the older generation of her family.  There was no one who could help her figure this out.  
   I was surprised by the devastation that Dani felt at this news. 
Quote:
"I slipped out of bed and walked barefoot into the bathroom.  My mind and body seemed to be disconnected.  My body wasn't the body I had believed it to be for fifty-four years.  My face wasn't my face.  That's what it felt like.  If my body wasn't my body, and my face wasn't my face, who was I?"

I would expect that it could be distressing and difficult to absorb, but Dani was already an adult with a family of her own.  But these are her thoughts:
"What makes a person a person?"
"Is who we are the same as who we believe ourselves to be?"

   She was obsessed as she delved into discovering her real ancestry.  And so she turned to the computer and enlisted the help of a genealogy researcher.

                                 I found this memoir absolutely compelling!