Drawing on the family history of a young Hispano woman in Colorado, Wheelwright discusses the BRCA1 mutation, and how the history of Sephardic Jews likely led to its appearance in families unaware of their descent from the conversos, and also how some whose ancestors underwent forced conversion to Catholicism later themselves chose to become Jehovah's Witnesses. Fascinating stuff.

Though this type of thing is right up my boyfriend's alley, I personally know very little about genetics and how genes are expressed and how they are traceable, apart from what I've gleaned from examining my own family history. I enjoyed this book because it was able to bring a historical and personal perspective to the science of genetics, tracing a particular genetic mutation through one woman's family, through her family history and the events which perpetuated her ancestors to migrate. I felt that the author did a good job blending the different topics together, making an interesting and readable book out of them, although I am not sure how much the science was simplified for a general audience. ( )

I'm fascinated by this topic, but I thought this book could have done so much more. First of all, there is an extensive amount of flowery landscape and historical descriptions that are good at first but quickly become far, far too lengthy. Second, I thought there was not enough science. Despite talking about heritability, there is no family tree for the Medinas that would show how frequently the mutation (or carrier status) occurred. Since there are so many relatives and many are related to each other in two ways, it was hard to keep this straight. ( )

This book is a well researched social history of the discovery of the BRCA gene mutations in the Hispanos of the San Luis Valley of Colorado.
Unfortunately, the book dragged. I wanted to know more, but kept putting this down in favor of other books.

My husband got sick of my repeated lament that the scientist in me wanted more science. In particular, the book lacks a Medina family tree that showing gene and disease status. I would have been satisfied with a diagram that anonymized the entries if the Medina family wanted to protect themselves and family members that had not specifically participated in the writing of the book. While who was tested, and what were the results are sprinkled throughout the book, it was hard to keep track of without a diagram. ( )

This is the story of Shonnie Medina, a young Hispano woman, her battle with cancer, and the very aggressive cancers that have struck generation after generation of her family. Its also about the Conversos of Spain, the Jews who converted to Christianity to avoid persecution, many later going to the New World ahead of the inquisition, and how their genes found their way into New Mexico and Colorado. The information presented by Wheelwright is very interesting but sometimes the way he told the story was a bit off-putting to me, leading to a very slow reading experience. I felt like his narrative kept hopping around from point to point and person to person. However his description of the San Luis Valley and its inhabitants was compelling even though he occasionally seemed to be trying for poetic description a little too hard.