Presentation & Booksigning with Jeff Wheelwright

Colfax Avenue: Meet journalist, former editor of LIFE magazine, contributor to Smithsonian magazine, and author Jeff Wheelwright, with a brilliant and emotionally resonant exploration of science and family history The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess.

At the center is a vibrant young Hispano woman, Shonnie Medina, who inherits a breast-cancer mutation that is a genetic variant characteristic of Jews. The Medinas knew they were descended from Native Americans and Spanish Catholics, but they did not know that they had Jewish ancestry as well. The mutation most likely sprang from Sephardic Jews hounded by the Spanish Inquisition into relocating. The discovery of the gene leads to a fascinating investigation of cultural history and modern genetics by Dr. Harry Ostrer and other experts on the DNA of Jewish populations.

Set in the isolated San Luis Valley of Colorado, this beautiful and harrowing book tells of the Medina family's five-hundred-year passage from medieval Spain to the American Southwest and of their surprising conversion from Catholicism to the Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1980s. Rejecting conventional therapies in her struggle against cancer, Shonnie Medina died in 1999. Her life embodies a story that could change the way we think about race and faith.

Request a signed copy: books@tatteredcover.com

Jeff Wheelwright's website

 

The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess: Race, Religion, and DNA By Jeff Wheelwright Cover Image
$26.95
Title unavailable, please email for information.
ISBN: 9780393081916
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - January 16th, 2012