I was so excited for this book and recommended it to many students based on the premise. I started it but then put it down and have to say, I have not been compelled to return to it.
There's nothing explicitly wrong with it - I just didn't feel hooked in by it. It's very well-written but also intellectual and academic (a bit) and at this particular moment, I just don't feel eager to pick it up at night. I want to read this book and hope that in the future I can start over and enjoy it in the way I'd hoped. I do think it has a lot to offer for folks interested in writing family histories or doing archival research into their personal stories.

Maud Newton's book attempts to measure what we inherit from our ancestors and the ways in which they shape our lives (both as influences and as patterns we reject and try to reshape our lives against). She starts with her own complex and tumultuous family. She begins by investigating some of her family's more dramatic stories (Did her grandfather really marry thirteen times? Did her great-grandfather really kill his best friend with a hay hook?) and ranges through a wide variety of subjects connected to the idea of inheritance (a sample: Ancestory.com and 23andme and the complicated ethics of genetic family trees, ancestors who enthusiastically owned slaves and helped eject Native Americans from their land, ancient Greek and medieval concepts of conception and inheritance, epigenetics and the possibility of inherited trauma, the current and changing science on likelihood of mental illnesses being inherited). I appreciated Newton's ability to depict the complexities of these changing ideas, and I always enjoyed the parts of the book where she took us step by step through a research journey. I was never quite sure where this book was going to head next, and at times I wanted more of a through-line to connect these complicated ideas together. I did find myself thinking about the implications of her research every time I closed the book.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free earc of this book; my opinions are my own.

Family relationships are difficult and always have been. A focal point of Ancestor Trouble highlights how our family past shaped us, impacts us in the present, and affects our future if we allow it. There can be a lot of darkness in our ancestors’ lives. “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

Ancestor Trouble dives into deeply personal family issues of the author. At the same time, it weaves social issues into the personal. Genealogy lore is explored. As a genealogist, I enjoyed all of the different aspects of Ancestor Trouble.

However: This book is much more than a memoir, and the breadth of topics was somewhat overwhelming. I believe that I was feeling overwhelmed as I received an e-arc of this book, in exchange for a review, from NetGalley. If I would have been holding a physical copy of the book and was reading for pure pleasure, I would probably have relaxed and taken the luxury of cherry picking chapters to read again. Don’t let my personal foibles stand in the way!

My solution to feeling overwhelmed is that I’m going to purchase the book once it’s released. For anyone who enjoys memoirs, wants to know more about genealogy, and is interested in dynamics of family relationships, this is a book to own.

The bibliography alone makes it worth it to incorporate this book into your reading. In fact, I’d give the book a 5 star rating simply for the bibliography. Ancestor Trouble is worthy of any genealogist’s library.

**This book was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

As an amateur family historian and moderator of a southern literary book club, I was excited to get an advance copy of what has been described as ‘an unflinching exploration into the history of a troubled family tree and the universal but also peculiarly American need to discover ‘roots.’’

Readers hoping for a how-to manual on researching family history may be disappointed. While the author does focus a lot on genealogy, she doesn’t dwell much on standard research procedures in the search for her ancestors’ stories. Hers is more a journey of self-discovery, an attempt to come to terms with her role as the descendant of racists, slave-owners, and abusers of indigenous peoples. In addition to genealogy, which she referred to as the oldest form of logic, the exhaustively researched memoir delves deeply into genetics, history, philosophy, psychology, and theology.

Newton’s first experience with family history came when her white supremacist father showed her pedigree charts in a failed effort to show their family’s superiority over other races. As she put it,
“I got interested in researching my father’s family when I learned there were things they didn’t want me to know. My sleuthing began in a spirit of gleeful defiance shadowed by a grimly obstinate self-righteousness. I wanted to root out every secret, lie, and hypocrisy and parade their skeletons up and down the block, to refute my dad’s mythology about what he called ‘our blood.’”
She soon came to believe in the quintessential nature of genealogy, arriving at the understanding that “the stories we tell ourselves about our ancestors have the power to shape us, in some ways nearly as much as our genetics do.” She cited as an example a story that her mother was fond of telling regarding the atmosphere at home when her father came home from work.
” Then his car would pull into the driveway, and, as she gleefully dramatized it to her friends at the time and still says now, the parakeets stopped singing, the cats slunk under the sofas, the dogs tucked their tails between their legs and crept out of sight, and my sister and I hovered anxiously near the hallway, waiting to gauge his mood when he came through the door.”

As a believer in the practice of verifying facts behind one’s research, part of me cringed at what I considered the lackadaisical approach she used in reporting her family history. Much of what she reports appears to be based solely on conjecture and hearsay, or derived from facial expressions in photographs. She makes up her ancestors` childhood attitudes and imagines the appearance of family dwellings she’s never seen. She attributes causal relationships to their vices and creates entire scenarios based solely on one snippet of information. She uses the word probably 30 times and variations of the word imagine another 77. It took me a while to realize that the journey that led her to learn about her family was not the same as mine. In her words,
How did my grandfather feel as he churned through wives and livelihoods and opted out of parenting his children? Was he regretful? Optimistic? Indifferent? Photos, letters, certificates, and census data couldn’t answer these questions, nor could my mom. I began to feel a sympathetic kinship with Robert only when I let my imagination and intuition become involved with what I knew of get involved with the evidence.

As many family researchers do, she turned to genetics to provide insights into her heritage but became disillusioned when she delved into the algorithms used to define geographic ancestries. Commenting on how the number of European ‘reference individuals’ vastly outnumber those from other continents, she sited a comment on Twitter that said “Only white people can steal you, enslave you for hundreds of years, systematically oppress you for hundreds more, then charge you $ 99.99 to tell you where they stole you from”.

In places the book veers off in totally unexpected directions. One such diversion is the chapter titled Lineage Repair in which Newton attends a seminar in the Black Mountains of North Carolina that focused on connecting with and repairing relationships with ancestors dating back thousands of years. She described the procedure as ‘a little abstract’, an opinion supported by her claim to have communicated with a ‘sort of fairy insect’ that ‘had a fat blue -green body like a caterpillar, large blue wings, and a blue human face.’

While this chapter did not endear me to the methods Newton employed to connect with her ancestors, she was sincere in her dedicated search for self-discover, something we all aspire to. Her approach may be unique, but I commend her for the effort she put into it.

*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy provided by NetGalley and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.

Maud Newton begins her book, Ancestor Trouble, with her search for her own heritage. I read the book that goes on sale March 29 in an advance reading copy furnished by Net Galley. She has heard family tales about the ancestor who married thirteen times and was killed by one of his wives and another who was killed with a hay hook and died in an institution. She begins using genealogy sites to find answers to her wonderings with inconsistent results.

Along with this long term search she brings her own nuclear family, whom she knows, into the picture, adding her family memories in a memoir fashion. Her racist father commends slavery and extols the purity of his own family line back to the Revolutionary War. However, he can’t control her mother who has thirty rescue cats and performs exorcisms in the church she has in the family living room. Her relief at her parents’ divorce and periodic estrangement from both of them only adds to her anxiety about how much of their identity will be passed along to her genetically. So, part of the book becomes the old nature vs. nurture enigma.

Sandwiched into the narrative, she recounts various cultural practices about death and dying. Her take on religious practices comes largely from her fundamentalist mother without much distinction for other types of Christian practice until she is near the end of the book. I found that to be a missing point in her narrative.

One word of warning – Maud mentions several other books and authors in her own book that make you think you must add them to your list. Second word of warning – if you are disturbed by reading things with which you disagree, this is not the book for you. It seems to me that almost everybody will find some argument with her. On the positive side, if you are interested in the old issue of nature versus nurture or genetics and ancestry, you will find much to interest you in the book. You may even come away glad that someone has relatives crazier than yours.

The author weaves a compelling story around her personal journey to understand herself and the family she comes from. Newton's father is a virulent racist who believes that "...slavery [was] a benevolent institution that should never have been abandoned..." Her mother is a fundamentalist Christian and self-styled minister who believes that sin is caused by demon possession. Mental illness runs rife in her mother's family as outspoken racism runs through members of her father's family. She ties her own personal family history research to wider concepts, stretching from the ancient Greek concept of the four "humours" that determined an individual's personality to the study of epigenetics, the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work.. She delves into ancestor veneration in cultures around the world and the perks and pitfalls of DNA tests from genealogy websites like Ancestry and 23andme.

Newton has written much more than a memoir or a "harrowing things I learned when I started digging into my family history" tale. She has synthesized research from many different fields and angles to try to piece together a way the individual may become whole through an understanding of the central relationship upon which all other experiences build: the parent-child bond and how that bond is reflected over and over down the generations. Highly recommended, particularly for those interested in family history and intergenerational trauma.

The introduction to this book gave me high hopes of reading something interesting about a family and family dynamics. Unfortunately, half of the book delved into too much scientific research in which I had little to no interest. That killed my interest and it made for a long read.

A very interesting read reading about discovering one's past and reconciling with distasteful aspects of one's close relations. Highly recommend and will be purchasing for library.

3.5 stars, rounded up. There's a lot in this book that is interesting, and readers who also struggle with their ancestral legacy will find a lot to identify with in this book. The more interesting parts of this story are Maud Newton's own, as she works through the long and turbulent history of her ancestors, but at times the scientific and technical elements of ancestral research that Newton details get bogged down with details. The spirituality section lost me quite a bit. But I do think that Newton is raising valid and important points about the way we look back at the actions and legacy of our forebears.

I found ANCESTOR TROUBLE to be an interesting insight into the family story of Maid Newton. Not only did she share family stories, but her journey in discovering some actions for which she is ashamed. I’m the south, these stories are not uncommon, however her strength in sharing about her family is much different from others.

I was intrigued about the extinct she went to in order to make some of the family connections.

I’m fascinated by family history stories, so I was drawn to Ancestor Troubles. From the start, I was drawn into her family story and the information about genes and DNA testing that was included.

I was intrigued by the similarities of places and migration patterns that my family heritage shared with hers. Her family was much more colorful than mine (at least as far as I know) and that gave a spark to what otherwise may have been a bland tale.

About mid-way through the book, I began to lose interest. I grew weary of the criticism of her father and other family members. She dwells mostly on racism during the last part of the story, never seeming to consider that her ancestors were products from their time. We can see their wrongs from today’s view and easily pass judgement on them. But, I wonder, if we were of their generation how much the same we would have been?

I felt like the book seemed to meander all over the place with various topics, at times being a bit repetitive. I also found it confusing to keep track of the various relatives she mentioned. Finally, she goes into detail about her spiritual journey, which I didn’t find to be that meaningful to her family history.

I liked the book, but a bit of editing and omitting of extraneous information could have streamlined this story and made it a better read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Random House for allowing me to read an advance copy. I am happy to give my honest review.

I was excited to receive access to this book and savored reading it. I love reading about family research and when skeletons are unearthed. From the description, Newton had a lot of good family secrets to unravel. The book lived up to my expectations, for the most part. I read all her research about both sides of her lineage with great interest. She spends a lot of time Analyzing different things about genealogy and research, stuff that I skimmed past because frankly it didn’t interest me.
If you’re looking for a lot of family history to unwrap, look no further.

This is a tough one to judge. It's not a memoir, really, but rather a look by an ace researcher into her personal history. Genealogy has become more popular with the spread of firms that do DNA profiling- which Newton employs here. Most of us have heard tales of our forebears and occasionally wondered about the truth of those stories. Newton set out to answer her own questions. How interesting you find this will depend on how invested you become in her family. There's some interesting commentary as well. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

While the author has researched the genealogy and history of her family exhaustively, the results seem poorly organized in this book. The narrative was confusing and repetitive. I kept losing track of which ancestors she was discussing and why. I wasn't able to develop any empathy with either the author or the ancestors she wrote about. I had to set the book aside about 20% of the way in. It is rare for me to mark a book DNF (did not finish), but I just didn't want to invest any more time in this one.

Maud Newton writes so well, and with such an engaging, personal style, that it’s not often clear what story she’s telling her readers in ANCESTOR TROUBLE. Her ancestors are less troubling than her parents, for her; and her investigations into her genealogy and her forays into the historical record of her family, while fascinating, ultimately reveal less about her painful circumstances than she hoped. She wants an answer for the disappointment and suffering she sustained from her parents. She hopes she can place it in a context, one defined by DNA and heredity. This book is very good and worth reading, but few answers arrive tidily from DNA, regardless of the promises offered by science. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

This book was regally good to read. Not only did she get DEEP into her family history and her relationship with hr parents is not that great as well. She got into genealogy, and started her own family tree. She discovered things about her family that are beyond colorful, lol. This book is a memoir but some parts I read felt fictional, and I liked the switch, it might be true occurrences it might not, who cares this is her book, lol. I learned a lot about the process and everything was very detailed. The topic is one that doesn’t really interest me but I loved the way the author laid everything out.
Thanks Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

I enjoyed a lot of this book, although I sometimes became bogged down in all of the detail that the writer went into to support her story. There were several times that I found myself skipping over sections in order to move things along. She definitely has an interesting, bizarre family, and I completely understand her concern about inheriting any of their behaviors. The book was about her family, but there was a lot of Information on genealogy research, and also quite a bit of philosophical discussion. I admire her for working so hard to overcome the difficulties of her childhood, which were substantial, and I have a feeling that writing this book this was very cathartic for her. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this ARC in return for my honest review.

In this research memoir, an acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her wildly unconventional Southern family. I included this in Apartment Therapy's Monthly New Book roundup.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of ANCESTOR TROUBLE by Maud Newton. As a Mormon, ancestry research is a big part of my culture. I never personally got into it, compared to some of my friends and family, but I still felt drawn to this book because of that culture. I also appreciated Newton's work to resolve her guilt over some of the things her ancestors had done—from enslaving people to stealing Native American land. I don't come from ancestors who enslaved people (my ancestors were too poor and didn't live in the South), but I think all white people in the U.S. have some kind of guilt about our history (or we should). So, I found reading about healing and reconciling that guilt helpful. I also enjoyed all her research into why we are drawn to our ancestors and why it's important to learn about them. It was a bit drawn out and tedious at times and could get repetitive—definitely a thick and slow read. Still, I kept thinking of people I knew who would love to read this and have. already started talking about it to people. So, overall, I found it a valuable read.

It’s a very interesting concept to merge deeply personal family history with an in-depth exploration of genealogy and the ways in which humans have chosen to engage with each other, or not, in the past. Maud Newton makes her family, and all of the good and ugly, the primary focus of exploration in this account. In her desire to dig deep into figuring out what makes her parents function — their personal beliefs and the ways in which they acted for better or worse that have helped or harmed their children — Newton creates an argument for the kinds of physical and emotional traits she may have inherited as well. She talks about how generational trauma can be embedded into brains at the genetic level from generations ago, that behavior patterns are more predictable than we can comprehend, and how the choices of our ancestors have shaped us today. Overall, her research does a fantastic job of helping readers understand more about how much our past can influence our present.