Dani Shapiro is a bestselling novelist and memoirist and host of the podcast Family Secrets (now in its seventh season). Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Time. She has taught at Columbia and New York University and is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference. Her new novel, Signal Fires, will be published by Knopf in October.
Signal Fires: A Gripping New Novel From the Author of Inheritance
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: LA Times, Time Magazine, LitHub, BookPage, Library Journal, The Millions, She Reads, Oprah Daily
One Night. One Fateful Choice. A Constellation of Lives Changed Forever.
Change one thing and everything changes. One summer night in 1985, the lives of three teenagers are shattered by a horrific car crash, resulting in the death of a young woman near a sprawling oak tree that marks the perimeter of 18 Division Street. For the Wilf family, it will become the deepest kind of family secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken. By the time the Shenkmans move in across the street—a young couple expecting a baby boy—the accident has become a distant memory. But when Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant but lonely child, befriends Ben Wilf, a retired doctor who is struggling with his wife’s decline, the Wilfs’ and the Shenkmans’ lives and fates become deeply entwined, and the past comes hurtling back to Division Street, setting in motion a chain of spellbinding events that will transform both families forever. Riveting, emotional, impossible to put down, a literary and commercial tour de force, and a work of haunting beauty and complexity by a masterly storyteller at the height of her powers.
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?
In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history–the life she had lived–crumbled beneath her.
Inheritance is a book about secrets–secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman’s urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in–a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.
Upcoming Appearances
Sunday, October 16, 2022
Washington, CT
Hickory Stick Bookshop at Community Table at 2:00 PM
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Brookline, MA
Brookline Booksmith at 7:00 PM
In conversation with Claire Messud
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
New York, NY
McNally Jackson at 7:00 PM
In conversation with Amor Towles
More information coming soon.
Dani Shapiro Shares Excerpt From Her Upcoming Novel Signal Fires, Her ‘Most Personal Book’ Yet
Entertainment Weekly announces Dani’s forthcoming novel – the first in 15 years! – Signal Fires. Knopf will publish in fall 2022.
The paperback edition of Inheritance is an LA Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and San Francisco Chronicle, and National Indie bestseller!
Dani’s podcast, “Family Secrets” launched into the top 10 of all podcasts on Apple! The podcast has over 22 million downloads, and its sixth season launched on December 9, 2021. Its seventh season is currently in production.
Inheritance has won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award!
Wired Magazine names Inheritance as one of 2019’s top Science books!
Inheritance named a best book of 2019 by Vanity Fair!
Inheritance will be adapted for film by Killer Films!
The New Yorker includes Inheritance in their summer reading round up!
The Today Show features Inheritance in their “20 Beach Reads You Won’t Want to Put Down” segment.
Inheritance debuted on The New York Times Best Seller List at #11!
Daunt Books in the UK has won an auction to publish Inheritance!
Thanks to everyone who watched Dani on Super Soul Sunday
