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    Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree
    Unavailable
    Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree
    Unavailable
    Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree
    Ebook302 pages4 hours

    Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree

    By Lisa Alther

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From a New York Times–bestselling author, a blend of “history, raucous wit, genealogical sleuthing, and charming childhood memories” (Wellesley Magazine).
     
    In a “wise, funny inquiry into the complexities of inheritance,” this acclaimed Southern author investigates her family’s hidden roots and the mysterious Melungeons (Booklist, starred review).
     
    Lisa Alther’s mother hailed from New York, her father from Virginia. One day a babysitter told Lisa about the Melungeons: six-fingered child-snatchers who hid in caves. It wasn’t until adulthood that Lisa learned the Melungeons were actually an isolated group of dark-skinned people—often with extra thumbs—living in East Tennessee. But who were they? Descendants of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony? Kin of shipwrecked Portuguese or Turkish sailors? Or were they the children of frontiersmen, or displaced Native Americans?
     
    Part sidesplitting travelogue, part lesson in how (and how not) to climb your family tree, Alther’s memoir casts light on a little-known part of America’s contentious racial history; it shimmers with wit, and demonstrates just how wacky and wonderful our human family truly is.
     
    “Filled with good humor, fine storytelling, and acute observations of small town life . . . Anyone who enjoys the humor and turn of phrase of Bill Bryson, Garrison Keillor, or Jean Shepherd should enjoy Kinfolks.” —Lodi News-Sentinel
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 5, 2012
    ISBN9781611459524
    Unavailable
    Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree
    Author

    Lisa Alther

    Lisa Alther is the bestselling author of five novels, among them the critically acclaimed Kinflicks, and a family memoir, Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree. She was born in Kingsport, Tennessee, in 1944, one of five children in a close-knit family influenced by both its Southern and “Yankee” roots. After attending Wellesley College and working in book publishing, she moved to Vermont, where she began to write and raise her daughter. Alther currently divides her time among Tennessee, Vermont, and New York City.

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    Reviews for Kinfolks

    3/5

    15 ratings1 review

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    • 1/5
      I picked this up almost reflexively, after all, I've loved Alther's fiction and I'm a big fan of the memoir. However, this meandering philosophical search for Alther's genetic heritage didn't suit me at all.

      To be fair, I do have a dog in this particular hunt. I suspect that because my own child's parentage will always be 50% unknowable mystery, I bristle a little when people assign importance to ancestry. I tend to err on the side of who you are does matter and who your ancestors were doesn't, so once Alther began to explain how hugely important knowing particulars of her heritage is to her, she began to lose me.

      I found much of the book to be wildly discursive and only intermittently interesting. It just wasn't for me, though I think that the more genealogically inclined would dig it.

      1 person found this helpful