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New at Peter White Public Library

While reading “MURDER IN MATERIA,” a true crime mystery, I began to wonder how many memoirs and historical narratives were written with genealogical research as the underlying focus. DNA research, online genealogy databases, and old-fashioned searches through public records are very popular with those trying to search for — or document their family histories. Find more of these fascinating stories in the nonfiction areas of the library.

“MURDER IN MATERA: A True Story of Passion, Family, and Forgiveness in Southern Italy” by Helene Stapinski (364.1532 ST) is a memoir of the author’s search for her great-great grandmother, Vita, who migrated to the U.S. from Italy in 1892. Over one hundred years later, the author, armed with old family stories and birth certificates, traveled to the Matera region of Italy. A notoriously poor part of the country, the history of Matera unraveled each time a new document was discovered. By using genealogical research to piece the puzzle together, the author found a scandal, a murder, antiquated customs, heartbreak, and extreme poverty in her Italian family tree. The old family legend became a true story from the past — a verifiable family history.

“DOWN CITY: A Daughter’s Story of Love, Memory, and Murder” by Leah Carroll (364.1532 CA) is a heart wrenching account of the author’s dysfunctional family, her mother’s drug-connected murder, and the unstable lifestyle of living with grandparents, aunts, and step-parents. By tracking back through photos, letters, employment documents, and Rhode Island newspaper stories, the author was able to piece together the short and tragic history of her immediate family. The author checks numerous unusual sources during her research, just as genealogists do.

“THE FACT OF A BODY” by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (364.1532 MA) is true crime at its best. At a summer internship in Louisiana, the author works on her first murder defense in the case of a young man who molested and killed a child. After graduating law school, she revisits this case because she can’t seem to forget the killer and the mother of the dead child. She looks through boxes and boxes of court documents, police evidence, and public records to track down friends and family. She needs to reconstruct the killer’s childhood and figure out what caused him to commit this crime. Throughout Alexandria’s research, memories of her own family secrets come to the surface, forcing her to compare memories with family members before she can confront the past and her own abuser.

“FUTUREFACE: A Family Mystery, An Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging” by Alex Wagner (929.2 WA) is a well-written account of the author’s search through her family tree to find a sense of belonging. The only child of a third generation European dad and a Burmese mom, Wagner felt that her blended heritage was outside the mold of her American Catholic household. As an adult, she quizzed her Burmese grandmother before studying the records and history of Burma. She found that by tracing “your ancestry, you end up charting the course of global struggle.” After a record searching trip to Burma, she also found that her grandmother had sanitized the family history with her own family mythology. When the author began to search her father’s European genealogy, she was able to find solid records that again took her on a path far from the family’s oral history. Wagner finally resorted to DNA testing to verify her research. Anyone starting a genealogical search will learn much from this book.

“SECRETS WE KEPT: Three Women of Trinidad” by Krystal Sital (972.983 SI) begins with the collapse of the author’s grandfather, Shiva, followed by her grandmother’s hesitation to fill out the paperwork to have him medically treated. Her mother, Arya, begins to narrate her childhood in Trinidad, including the beatings Shiva gave to his wife and his children. It didn’t sound like the kindly grandfather the author had been exposed to, but things became clearer as her mother’s story continued. Lacking official government documents after a lengthy search, Sital presents her family’s oral history by piecing together three very different perspectives of her mother, grandmother, and grandfather. Their immigrant story is greatly influenced by geography and culture.

“MY EUROPEAN FAMILY: The First 54,000 Years” by Karin Bojs (929.34 BO) begins with the author’s quest for family after her mother’s funeral. She decided to have her DNA tested to find her ancestral roots, which turned out to be primarily European. Fascinated with research, Bojs continued beyond conventional genealogy to investigate pre-historic genetics, including the Neanderthals of Germany and Cro-Magnon man in France. This book is full of history and science, covering prehistoric cultures of hunters in Northern Europe, farmers in Central and Southern Europe, and Indo-Europeans in the Middle East.

By Lynette Suckow

Reference Department

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