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The Juggler's Children
A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us
by Carolyn Abraham
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Pub Date Jan 28 2013 | Archive Date Apr 02 2013
Random House of Canada Limited | Random House Canada
Description
Recently, tens of thousands of people have been drawn to mail-order DNA tests to learn about their family roots. Abraham investigates whether this burgeoning new science can help solve 2 mysteries that have haunted her multi-racial family for more than a century. Both hinge on her enigmatic great-grandfathers--a hero who died young and a scoundrel who disappeared. Can the DNA they left behind reveal their stories from beyond the grave?
Armed with DNA kits, Abraham criss-crosses the globe, taking cells from relatives and strangers, a genetic journey that turns up far more than she bargained for--ugly truths and moral quandaries. With lively writing and a compelling personal narrative, The Juggler's Children tackles profound questions around the genetics of identity, race and humanity, and tells a big story about our small world, with vivid proof that genes bind us all to the branches of one family tree.
Advance Praise
“With this daring act of tracing her genetic genealogy all the way back to its widely scattered origins, Carolyn Abraham redefines the meaning of the expression ‘know thyself.’ The Juggler’s Children is as exciting as any explorer’s account of the discovery of a new land, as carefully written as a fine novel, as rigorous as it is entertaining. But its greatest achievement is its astonishing, profoundly moving findings, its proof that the human race is, in fact, one family after all.” —Ian Brown, award-winning author of The Boy in the Moon
“The Juggler’s Children is simultaneously a compelling family mystery and brilliant science writing. As she cracks her own family’s genetic code, Carolyn Abraham makes the complexities of DNA and the genetic linkages that bind us immediately accessible. Deciphering the Y chromosomes of her male relatives takes her from the tea plantations of India’s Nilgiri Hills to the sugar cane estates of Jamaica’s north coast, and from simple questions to the hard truths of genealogy, where paternity can come as a shock and an ancestor who joined a traveling circus may have been escaping a criminal past. The book, quite simply, is a great read.” —Dr. Miriam Shuchman, prize-winning author of The Drug Trial
“Combining traditional journalistic digging with the cutting edge science of genetic genealogy, Carolyn Abraham takes us on a witty and engaging journey across India, China, Europe and Jamaica in search of her polyglot family ancestry. Along the way, she separates legend and fact, individual and group identity, deftly unspooling the why? in the Y chromosome. In the end, she vividly demonstrates that inside the microcosmic gene pool of a single Canadian family—and thus all families—we will find the vast history of humanity. Whether princes or paupers, slaves or slave-drivers, we’re all the same under the skin.” —James FitzGerald, author of What Disturbs Our Blood, winner of the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize
Available Editions
EDITION | Hardcover |
ISBN | 9780679314592 |
PRICE | CA$32.00 (CAD) |