A Fatal Inheritance by Lawrence Ingrassia is a compelling personal chronicle of tragedy and triumph. It captures both the ineffable pain of families riddled with cancers and the remarkable research over the past half century by scientists determined to help them.”
—Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
"When two young doctors came across a family riddled with cancer for generations, they wondered why and began a decades long search for the answer. In A Fatal Inheritance, a riveting narrative of their quest, Lawrence Ingrassia intertwines a deeply personal and tearful story of unbearable family loss with an inspiring story of scientific discovery that revolutionized the understanding and treatment of cancer."
—Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk, The Code Breaker and Steve Jobs
"When Lawrence Ingrassia lost his mother, sisters, brother and nephew to cancer, was it appallingly bad luck, or was there a common cause? This is the story of a family tragedy, a medical mystery, and the painstaking work of insightful scientists. By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, A Fatal Inheritance is a story of mortal loss and human resilience."
—Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse and March
"Spurred on by his family’s extraordinary experiences with cancer, Lawrence Ingrassia reports compassionately and comprehensively on the breakthroughs of genetic research into the illness. Through his eye-opening journalism, we learn how scientific progress really happens—in fits and starts and endless reversals, and with an endless capacity for hope."
—Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road
"Fortune surely frowned on the Ingrassias—a family beset by a genetic anomaly that beamed scientific light into the twisty nature of cancer—and smiled on readers, by making its central member one of America's truly great journalists. The result is an extraordinary, empathic, medical detective story and emotional roller-coast. This is a beautiful book that will break hearts and then heal them. A treasure."
—Ron Suskind, author of Life, Animated
"Lawrence Ingrassia's quest to understand what felt like a curse on his family turns out to be one of the most eye-opening stories. The portrait he draws of his family's medical mystery and the two doctors who pioneered its treatment is a masterful work of reporting and writing, filled with unflinching honesty, empathy, and wisdom. A Fatal Inheritance is a brilliant, unforgettable book that I recommend highly."
—Bryan Burrough, author of Barbarians at the Gate
"What emerges from A Fatal Inheritance is an evocative tribute—not to the lofty aspirations of biomedical science but to the fully inhabited lives of Ingrassia’s family members, who struggled so courageously while waiting (and waiting) for deliverance to arrive."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Poignant. . . Stirring. . . Deeply reported. . . Readers will be rewarded with a detailed look at the high — and all-too-human — stakes of cancer research."
—The Washington Post
“A Fatal Inheritance is a beautiful book that brings together... families with Li-Fraumeni Syndrome and their tragic losses (to cancer), and scientists who are exploring and uncovering the unknown basis of that complex and confusing disorder. By alternating the chapters about these two groups and their lives and deaths, their triumphs and failures, Ingrassia does not let us forget what we are living with and what we are working for."
—Arnold Levine, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, and one of the discoverers of the P53 gene and protein
"An emotionally charged narrative about... scientific discovery, hope, loss, grief, and, especially, familial love."
—Booklist
