Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation by Maud Newton
Nonfiction
What it’s about: In this candid, vulnerable, and engaging mash-up of memoir, genealogical research, science, and sociology, the author investigates her troubling family history. From shocking stories about her parents to disturbing discoveries about her Southern ancestors, Newton faces the unsettling truths about her family. Interspersed with her genealogical quest, she explores genetic research to learn more about nature vs. nurture, and she does some serious soul searching to determine how to respond to her findings.
You might also like: Readers of The Glass Castle will find Newton’s family story similarly compelling. To read another memoir about life-changing genealogical discoveries, pick up Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love.
Reviewers say: “An engaging and thoroughly researched memoir relaying a family history that is at turns recognizable and abhorrent, as an honest and typical history of American exceptionalism, racism, and misogyny. Will appeal to lovers of memoirs, family secrets, genealogy, and the sociological makeup threading U.S. history” (Library Journal).