Sharon Beth’s research into family genealogy provides the fodder for this memoir, a skillfully unfolded detective story.

Like many Americans, Beth took up the mantle of family genealogist because no one else was making a record. A Gen Xer, she became proficient in mining public documents, analyzing Ancestry.com data, and conducting interviews with her oldest family members. Unlike many, Beth possessed 8mm film reels from the 1950s and ‘60s that belonged to her fun-loving maternal grandparents. Those pored-over images fed her enthusiasm—and provided tantalizing clues to a family secret.

DNA results revealed her maternal grandfather wasn’t biologically related to her mother. Under questioning, the author’s great aunt revealed that her sister had experienced a loving affair with another man early in her marriage, which her descendants never suspected given the grandparents’ long, happy marriage. A big question is whether the man Beth called her grandfather knew he wasn’t her mother’s biological father.

The author gives appropriate space to her mother’s journey and sadness that the man she loved as her father wasn’t, in fact, related to her. Readers will crave more stories about Beth’s glamorous women forebears and their burlesque dancing careers in mid-century New York City. By contrast, accounts of her father’s side and her own too-good-to-be-true husband and children are less compelling. The book includes family photos, though unfortunately not as many as are featured on the author’s website.

Throughout, Beth candidly admits to sometimes second-guessing herself and harboring occasional regrets that her sleuthing upended what she and her family believed about their maternal roots. That tension alone drives this story. There are no villains, just caring people coping as best they can.

Part cautionary tale, part fairy tale, the adventure seems to bring out the best in the author as she gives grace to relatives who hid secrets, accepts her family rewritten narrative and opens her heart to sudden kin. Others on risky genealogy quests will find her a compassionate guide.

Also available in hardcover and ebook.