Newton points to the early nature of the research and whether it can be replicated, and asks whether white supremacy itself is transmissible. Perhaps the epigenetics debate with which people are most familiar is whether the collective trauma of the Holocaust has been passed down through genetics to descendants. She does this by weaving together strands of research on epigenetics, trauma studies, funerary practices, and spiritual connections while also asking tough questions about how to atone for the histories we inherit.

While Newton could have settled for comparing the stories she heard as a child with what she found through genealogical research to reveal a singular family portrait, she presents instead a rich and powerful understanding of the ways that linking ourselves to our family tree provides a sense of connection that helps us feel grounded. She brings her astute mind and her engaging writing style to explore why people are so intrigued by what they find in their ancestral past, and whether recent findings in genetics support notions of inheriting the temperaments or intellectual or athletic gifts of our forbears. But as she researched further, she also became fascinated with the process of genealogical research itself. Newton’s beautiful and complexly nuanced “ Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation” began as an attempt to seek answers to personally troubling questions about her white Southern family’s role in the slave trade. Almost nothing I discovered about him fit the narrative arc I’d plotted.” “I started my research expecting to find - if I could find him at all - an unapologetic swashbuckling hothead. “I can’t recall whether it was my mom or Granny who told me that Charley killed a man with a hay hook in downtown Dallas,” begins one of Maud Newton’s stories. Illo for books sandra dionisi for the boston globe

Ancestor trouble maud