A DNA test unravels everything
Phillip and Spencer grew up believing one story about who they were. Their mother's deathbed hint — and a mail-order genetic kit — quietly blow it apart.
The Story
Everything changes in a single sentence at her bedside.
Phillip and Spencer have grown up believing the same story everyone else believed: that they are the Jewish-American sons of their late father, killed in Vietnam, and their irrepressible, globe-trotting mother, Jenny. Two days before she dies, Jenny leans over to Phillip and — almost as an aside — suggests that since he's half Irish, he might want to be a little more careful about his drinking.
A few weeks later, grief turns into curiosity, curiosity turns into a DNA test, and a DNA test turns into a plane ticket. Phillip drags his brother into what becomes a genetic treasure hunt — from Long Island living rooms to the windswept links of the west coast of Ireland — in search of a biological father who left no forwarding address and, it turns out, a family neither of them ever imagined.
By the time they reach the sea cliffs, the question has stopped being who was he? and morphs into something much deeper: if the people you came from aren't the people you thought they were, are you still the person you thought you were?
