Dining with Squirrels

The Family Gene:  A Mission To Turn My Deadly Inheritance Into A Hopeful Future by Joselin Linder.

Joselin Linder’s father dies from something doctors cannot explain.  When the family starts connecting his death to other mysterious family deaths, they and curious doctors consider a genetic link.  Linder writes a book that is part memoir, part medical mystery, part family history, and partly the history of genetics.  It’s like a Immortal Henrietta Lacks written by a smart and smart-ass millennial.  This was really really good and Linder’s writing appeals to me for its rhythm and timing:  she is swift without being superficial, detailed without being deadly . Here’s an example:

“An alarm sounded, but right then it was unclear what it foretold — or that it even had anything to foretell.  We were not a family who routinely dealt with catastrophe.  We lived in Ohio.”