A Fatal Inheritance

How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery

De: Lawrence Ingrassia

Narrado por: Roger Wayne

Long-listed, BookPage Best Books of the Year, 2024

National Book Critics Circle Award nominee, 2024

Long-listed, Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2024

"Listeners will find A Fatal Inheritance to be an effective overview of research on cancer and hereditary predisposition, one that achieves serious investigation while remaining intensely human.”—BookPage

Weaving his own moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, Lawrence Ingrassia delivers an intimate, gripping tale that sits at the intersection of memoir and medical thriller

Ingrassia lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to cancer—different cancers developing at different points throughout their lives. And while highly unusual, his family is not the only one to wonder whether their heartbreak is the result of unbelievable bad luck, or if there might be another explanation.

Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, Ingrassia takes us from the 1960s—when Dr. Frederick Pei Li and Dr. Joseph Fraumeni Jr. first met, not yet knowing that they would help make a groundbreaking discovery that would affect cancer patients for decades to come—to present day, as Ingrassia and countless others continue to unpack and build upon Li and Fraumeni’s initial discoveries, and to understand what this means for their families.

In the face of seemingly unbearable loss, Ingrassia holds onto hope. He urges us to “fight like Charlie,” his nephew who battled cancer his entire life starting with a rare tumor in his cheek at the age of two—and to look toward the future, as gene sequencing, screening protocols, CRISPR gene editing, and other developing technologies may continue to extend lifespans and perhaps, one day, even offer cures.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

©2024 Lawrence Ingrassia (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“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

Fascinating medical nonfiction

Beautifully told story of families suffering from an inherited medical disorder and the researchers looking for the cause. The author uses the story of his own extended family and of several others to make this an unusually poignant and affecting book. The writing is outstanding and the narration is perfect.

Powerful story told incredibly well

Cancer decimated the author's family, taking lives way too soon, way too often, as he recounts in this book. But this story is much bigger than that. It's an incredibly powerful tale, not just of his family, but of other families, of posing questions and seeking answers. The lyrical prose of his retelling reads like a novel, while his decades as a journalist with the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times come through in his detailed chronicling of the journey to unwrap the medical mystery of why his branch of the family (and so many other families) have been plagued by cancer. He skillfully distills medical research into everyday language so that readers can understand the science, while he pieces in families' stories so that they can empathize with the real-life toll cancer takes on so many.

Touching story with powerful lessons in hope.

This book provides an overview of the history of cancer diagnosis and treatments in a thoughtful way that is accessible to the non-scientific community. It sets the story context in the lives of cancer patients and their families. If you have a loved one who experienced cancer, you will cry painful tears and hopeful ones. I had to take breaks from the book, and each time it was easy to pick it back up. 🫶

Absolutely beautifully written, fascinating, poignant, tragic and unforgettable.

I am an oncology nurse practitioner and the nerd in me adores a good biomedical documentary. This is more than that, it is an odyssey, and from the moment I started it, I could not put it down. The writing is also at a level that is understandable for people without backgrounds in science, nursing or medicine.

The history of the discovery of this particularly brutal heritable cancer syndrome is absolutely fascinating and Lawrence Engrassia skillfully weaves this together with stories from the initial families studied to ascertain the cause of the syndrome with stories of his own family. The details of these families repeated suffering as family member after family member is torn from them will forever be indelibly seared into my memory.

Stunning story and great reporting

Beautifully reported book, wonderfully read by the narrator. The book intertwines the authors story of losing his entire family to cancer with the story of the epidemiologists who discovered a cancer gene, and the families they studied on their path. This book will be interesting to anyone who has lost a family member to cancer and grappled with fear and grief around that loss.

The research

The personal facts of these families was so honest. The cancer research into the causes of cancer was very talented.

Full of emotion

Honest and straightforward prose , full of emotion. I felt the story and learned so much as well . Worth enduring the technical parts , overall enjoyed .

An important book

This book blends the heart wrenching story of the Ingrassia family and how cancer shadowed three generations with chronicling the discovery of a genetic link. Superb story telling that keeps the reader engaged even as we can anticipate the devastating outcome. The science is conveyed clearly, so that non-scientists can grasp the progress to discovering the key mutation. Engrossing, illuminating and personal.

An Elucidating Memoir

Mr. Ingrassia has managed to write a reader friendly treatise on cancer research that reads like a novel. With a journalist’s talent for getting to the heart of a story in a clear and concise manner, he educates the reader on the process of medical research all the while interspersing the technical issues with the very touching human stories of families, including his own, plagued by recurring cancers. This memoir is truly a masterpiece of research by the author as well as a love letter to his family.

Fascinating history, heartbreaking story

I am affected by an inherited genetic mutation with increased cancer risk, and an advocate for expanded germline genetic testing for more people, I feel like I am pretty knowledgeable about the topic but I did not know the backstory and history of the way researchers worked to discover and demonstrate the cancer-genetic link. It was very interesting and told in a way that was technical yet understandable - and interesting! The author wove this background history into the devastating losses in his own family that came, one after another, just a bit too early in time for the discoveries of the genetic link to be beneficial for them. I listened to this audiobook twice to absorb it all. I rarely leave reviews, but this one touched me. I hope it is read widely and that even one family will take a closer look at their family experience with cancer and inquire about germline testing - it could save the lives of the current and next generations.