The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History Through DNA

by Edward Ball

The Genetic Strand is the story of a writer's investigation, using DNA science, into the tale of his family's origins. National Book Award winner Edward Ball has turned his probing gaze on the microcosm of the human genome, and not just any human genome -- that of his slave-holding ancestors. What is the legacy of such a family history, and can DNA say something about it?

In 2000, after a decade in New York City, Ball bought a house in Charleston, South Carolina, home to his father's family for generations, and furnished it with heirloom pieces from his relatives. In one old desk he was startled to discover a secret drawer, sealed perhaps since the Civil War, in which someone had hidden a trove of family hair, with each lock of hair labeled and dated. The strange find propelled him to what might DNA science reveal about the people -- Ball's family members, long dead -- to whom the hair had belonged? Did the hair come from white relatives, as family tradition insisted? How can genetic tests explain personal identity?

Part crime-scene investigation, part genealogical romp, The Genetic Strand is a personal odyssey into DNA and family history. The story takes the reader into forensics labs where technicians screen remains, using genetics breakthroughs like DNA fingerprinting, and into rooms where fathers nervously await paternity test results. It also summons the writer¹s entertaining and idiosyncratic family, such as Ball¹s antebellum predecessor, Aunt Betsy, who published nutty books on good Southern society; Kate Fuller, the enigmatic ancestor who may have introduced African genes into the Ball family pool; and the author¹s first cousin Catherine, very much alive, who donates a cheek swab from a mouth more attuned to sweet iced tea than DNA sampling.

Writing gracefully but pacing his story like an old-fashioned whodunit, Edward Ball tracks genes shared across generations, adding suspense and personal meaning to what the scientists and Nobel laureates tell us. A beguiling DNA tale, The Genetic Strand reaches toward a new form of writing the genetic memoir.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Memoir, History, Biography, Genetics

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Edward Ball was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1958, grew up in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. He finished high school in New Orleans and attended Brown University, graduating in 1982 with a B.A. in Semiotics.

He received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Iowa in 1984, and afterwards moved to New York City, where he worked as a freelance art critic, writing about film, art, architecture, and books for several magazines. For several years, he wrote for The Village Voice, a weekly with a circulation of 450,000.

In 1993, he began to research his family legacy as slave owners in South Carolina, an investigation that resulted in a half-hour National Public Radio documentary, "The Other History," which was awarded, in 1994, Best Radio Feature by the Society of Professional Journalists. He looked deeper into his family's story, documented in several archives, and, after three years, published his first book, Slaves in the Family, about his family's plantations and his search for black Americans whose ancestors the writer's family had once enslaved. Slaves in the Family was a New York Times bestseller and won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

Edward Ball's other books comprise biography, history, and memoir. He has taught at Yale University, and he lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Reviews

[Ellee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't quite the book that a brief description makes it out to be. What most of the book does is describe the current state of DNA testing in most of the variations that someone is likely to come across. That it was mostly science-talk didn't bother me - I'm familiar enough with the science around DNA to not be bothered by "the Vocabulary." What did bother me, though, was getting back to what the brief description promises - a book about race and racial tension within multiple generations of a family. In my opinion, the book didn't spend *nearly* enough time with this. I couldn't help but cringe when the author talks about the possibility of having non-white ancestors with some of his family members. They sound really excited about it, but sound so ignorant in their discussion that it's really off-putting.

I also found the implicit white privilege in the whole premise of the book somewhat off-putting too: the well-off white guy finds some family hair in his family heirloom desk (which he finds really bizarre, but I think is fairly common to collect a bit of hair from a first haircut, etc..) and decides to go to the expense of having it DNA tested to see if his family's story about who they are is accurate. While he hoped to find traces of Native American or African ancestry in the DNA samples collected (probably so he'd have the premise for another book), I was struck by the fact that he's *able* to do this, whereas for many of the descendants of the slaves his family held, they *don't* have a long family story and at least some (I won't say many, because I don't know) don't have the means to find out via DNA testing (he doesn't talk about the cost of all the testing in the book).

****SPOILER****
The book doesn't bother me because it's not an apologist work. It bothers me because it's as if he and his relatives covet biological evidence of the mistreatment of the women they held as slaves (or the illicit activities of the white women in their family). The book bothers me because after he's found out that his family is as white as they always thought they were - even if there's no "noble" blood in their family - the book just stops. Oh, huh. DNA testing sometimes makes mistakes - cue skepticism about EVERYTHING related to DNA, blah, blah. It came off as though he's the spoiled kid who didn't get his way and now he doesn't want to play anymore, though it's better written than to sound *whiny*. It bothers me that he wanted to spend the $$ to try to rewrite his family history _because he wanted to_ when most other people (white or not) can't. Just makes it seem like he's not so far removed from his ancestors as he'd like to be - ideologically.

[Angelique Simonsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this but was disappointed that the end result was not what I had hoped. The genetics in this got a little confusing and this book highlighted just how fallible dna testing can be.

[Judy Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the only book that i have actually "read" about DNA. i find it a dry subject at best for myself ( not the scientific type) .
This author (and i don't recall reading anything else by him) manages to take DNA and make it into a family story with well written prose and HUMOR.
i enjoyed this, a slim volume.

[Barbarawiley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author is able to take a fascinating subject and beat the reader over the head with endless detail that helps one go to sleep at night. I found it necessary to skip pages.

[Nancy Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a genealogy and family history hobbyist, I picked up this title used from Better World Books without paying close attention to the publication date. The premise was intriguing--the author in Charleston, S.C. finds a collection of hair samples in an old heirloom desk and tries to have them analyzed in order to learn more about his paternal ancestors. However, this took place in the early 2000's when DNA analysis for purposes other than crime forensics was just emerging. Mr. Ball actually had a difficult time finding an organization that would analyze his DNA. One of the places he tried said they would not sell a test kit to a "civilian".

In the course of developing this book, Mr. Ball learned that his white plantation-owning paternal family background had a non-white component, only to have that revelation contradicted by other data. He felt profoundly disappointed, resulting in a chapter-long rant about arrogant scientists who promise more than they can deliver. My reaction to this is that his essentially frivolous personal research (looking to find out how pure the whiteness was in his family tree) was presented to a science/industry that was just barely under way. From the vantage point of 2023, the entire enterprise undertaken in this book is quaint and primitive.

Ball was brave to attempt layman-friendly explanations of technical aspects of genetics and DNA analysis. I did not have confidence in this information, mainly because parts of it are undoubtedly out of date. But also I took away the impression that Mr. Ball is not scientifically-minded. He is mainly a writer--someone who enjoys a turn of phrase--whose prose style is consistent with his patrician origins and ivy league education. And his all-white plantation-owning, slave-holding forbearers seem to be the main theme of his published works. His most recent book profiles his great-grandfather, a Ku Klux Klan leader in Louisiana.

The purpose of his research for this book is unclear. His feelings about his family background are unclear. How he reconciles his present-day life with the exploitative and cruel ways of his ancestors is not discussed. The lack of such discussion leaves this book frustratingly incomplete.

I learned a lot about the state of DNA analysis for genealogy in its infancy, but otherwise I found this book rather hollow. Hence I rate it just 2.5.

[Cynthia Livingston · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't waste your time reading this book. I only stuck with it to the end because of the DNA information that was included. I am not sure how valid results can be from cut off hair samples hidden for many years in an old desk that was in his family for many many years, from back in the day when they owned plantations with slaves and thought they were 100% white. In the end he rants about DNA and ends with a story about the Serer people in Senegal having the T2 haplogroup which "probably" had roots in Europe, not Africa. This was through mitochondrial DNA analysis - the author and a female cousin were concerned about the racial purity of their great grandmother. I am curious and will pursue the testing company's note that there are European lineages in other North African tribes (eg. Berbers). The most interesting tidbit was reading about the author's meeting with Karry Mullis, who was a co-Knobel prize winner for the discovery of a revolutionary technique in molecular biology called PCR or polymerase chain reaction. Mullis wrote a book and it should be interesting

[DeLynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book started out interesting enough; I enjoy reading about genealogy, family history and lore and the like. I also fount the genetic information early in the book interesting and informative, being the somewhat of a science and biology geek that I am.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I must report that the last 3 chapters were extremely disappointing. The author could have completely left those out and they wouldn't have been missed. They were dry and uninteresting. Beyond that, he wandered off on a completely unnecessary tangent, bashing research and the funding that supports it, claiming it to be unreliable and jaded because it is besieged with special interest money. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it would be nice if it were based on some facts; he's way off base.

[Karalynn Shade · Rating 1 out of 5]

At first an interesting story with information that the reader can learn from about DNA, but then the writing becomes drab as this man writes a book about his pretty boring family. I didn’t get past the third chapter. It felt like when you add things to your college paper to hit the word limit.

[Erin Eckert · Rating 3 out of 5]

The science parts were good and interesting. His personal stories, not so much though. His opinion at the end was largely inaccurate and showed a misunderstanding of his research.

[DonnaE7654 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the information was dated was overall a great read.

[Lee Melancon · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book about a man trying to uncover sordid family secrets using DNA and then throwing a mini tantrum about how scientists are all stuck-up know-it-alls when he doesn't find any.

[Rosemary Nichols · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read two other books by this author about his wealthy South Carolina slave holding family. I enjoyed Slaves in the Family and The Sweet Hell Inside more because they were more purely "ancestoring".
This book was published in 2007 and the science of DNA investigation has made great advances in the decade since. But this is a good primer on the evolution of genetic research wrapped in a family mystery.
Ball found little snippets of family hair in the hidden compartment of an old secretary he purchased from a relative. This set him on a search.

[Karla Huebner]

This was okay, but somewhat disappointing. I was intrigued by the idea of finding and DNA-testing samples of ancestral hair (we're about to test my mother's DNA in part because both of her grandfathers are mystery men). However, the book veered back and forth between the family story and the story of testing the various samples at quite a few different labs, and while I'm interested in genetics, some of the scientific explanation seemed tediously basic and much more of it seemed tediously technical. There did not seem to be a happy medium here on the science, except in the part where it turned out that some of the hair showed major amounts of lead, arsenic, and mercury. Toward the end, samples were retested by different labs, with the result that earlier indications of Native American and African ancestry were negated as test error. The author then sermonized about how DNA has become a new religion and that people spread the belief that DNA research will reveal/cure all. I found that rather annoying. On the one hand, errors (particularly in legal use of DNA) can be serious. On the other hand, it seems quite probable that increased knowledge about human DNA will lead to some of the predicted medical breakthroughs (and who knows, perhaps help us pin down those slippery characters in my mother's ancestry, who left names and DNA and not much else behind). All in all, I'd rather go back to reading the author's first book (Slaves in the Family), which awaits me on my mother's bookcase.

[Diane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an interesting concept. The author finds lockets of hair from several his ancestors from as early as 1830 in the drawer of a family heirloom desk. He decides to do DNA analysis on the hair to confirm or deny some family stories. They might have had an African and/or a Native American ancestor. He goes to several different DNA labs with different niche specialties. He explains at length the science behind DNA and analysis and interviews several scientists. Alternating with the science he tells stories of his ancestors and speculates about events that what might have occurred.
I enjoyed all that, although the science was a bit over my head. Then at the end of the book he goes off on his rants with sweeping generalities about genealogists and scientists. He says that genealogists are all middle aged whites who “look for ancestors with the goal to unearth the whitest, most moneyed forbears they can. That is one definition of good genes.”
After that he goes off on how arrogant scientists are, but maybe it’s not them, it’s the way journalists portray them. And DNA is unreliable anyway.
But some scientist are really good people looking for the truth.
If he would have just stuck with the story it would have been a good book, regardless of the outcome of the research. But his rants just really pissed me off. Mr. Ball, you lost 2 stars because of those rants.
Also, it would have been really helpful to have included a family tree. I got quite lost with the relationships of the people behind the strands of hair.

[Gloria Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting discussion of one family and using DNA testing to try to learn about their ancestry. the book is out of date in terms of modern DNA testing for personal genealogy, but interesting in that he found a collection of hair samples from many deceased members of his own family.

Modern genealogy companies such as Ancestry.com and FamiltytreeDNA and 23andme had not yet begun doing genealogical DNA testing when this book was published in 2007. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see his quest to find laboratories to test his samples. The databases now available would probably have helped more in his quest, and as genealogical testing continues to grow in popularity, such tests and databases will become more available and more accurate.

I found the story interesting because every genealogist would love to find a trove of stored hair samples going back more than a hundred years. Yet the question of ethnic ancestry is still open because insufficient databases have been accumulated to determine origins. Also DNA in maternal and paternal lines goes back so far that the ancient origins of a family may be very different from the nations we know our family came from in recent genealogical history.

I enjoyed this book which read like a family story and also included much information about the science of DNA testing as it existed just a short time ago. This field continues to evolve.

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are two aspects of this book: an explanation of DNA testing and the application of that testing to nineteenth century hair samples from Ball's family.

The better part of the book is the application part, especially as Ball explains his family tree and then tries to add information with the DNA testing of not only the strands, but also his own DNA and that of cousins he tracks down from various branches. He learns some about his racial heritage and some about mercury levels. That's all interesting. The DNA testing part is mind numbing, with way too much detail about this numbered marker and its possibilities and that numbered marker, plus the advantages of this method of testing versus that method of testing, plus the history of how the testing developed and the status at the moment, and it is dull, dull, dull, like stepping into a genetics textbook by accident.

The best chapter is the last chapter, where he goes on a genteel rant about how scientists in general and geneticists in particular are treated with the same reverence and non-questioning of their authority that his clergyman father was, when really their results should be questioned because their data might be flawed. (In his own DNA testing there was some flawed results which led both him and his family members to question their racial identity.)

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The family history is what interested me - but I had to skim over a lot of the very technical science. What was startling to me was after much time and testing, he received conflicting and confusing results.

He writes: " Until the "Indian" and "African test results, I'd had no reason to question ... that we were white to the bone. Then, with an involuntary faith in science, I'd dropped the idea of our whiteness. But with the new, conflicting data, and with reports of sequencing errors, things were ambiguous. The hair collection had lost its Indian-ness as quickly as it had once acquired it during early research."

Regardless of the question of his racial make-up, the contradictory results seemed a surprise to him, and the reader as well. "By investigating a small corner of the genetics empire, I found a crack...DNA data can be shallow and strewn with error. Genetics can't support the desires people bring to it." My takeaway is that - at this moment - the science isn't as infallible as I had believed., given people are being convicted or released from prison based on DNA. But this was written in 2007, and we are already light years past so it can only get better.

[Cyndi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A family history interspersed with the science of DNA testing. Both are interesting and decently written. The story moves towards a conclusion but then claims testing error and ends up back where the author started, knowing very little new information about his family. While I'm sure it was even more disappointing for him than for his readers, it doesn't make much sense. He had three separate tests on three separate people pointing to this one conclusion and only one of the tests was in error (meaning the connection was there, just not through the family member he thought). Yet he ends the book saying it was all a mistake.

In part, this book suffers from what all literature within a quickly evolving science suffers from: It's only 6 years old but it's out of date. I don't know how much the handling of old hair samples has advanced in this time, but the newer DNA tests he and other living family members have been taking have certainly changed tremendously.

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author comes upon some "hairlooms" (locks of hair from his forbears) and shares what he learns as he pursues DNA analysis on them.

The book rambles. He writes something of his slave holding ancestors and some bits and pieces about DNA. Most interesting to me were the current uses and potential uses of DNA from hair, bone, blood, saliva, etc. and how researchers characterize the patterns of human migration that DNA research has unlocked.

Interviews with living family members and DNA researchers are prefaced with some descriptions about their personal style and/or their office or home. Some descriptions carry a slightly negative tone which isn't called for in such a book. Similarly, the book ends with Ball's takes on science journalism and current students preparing for careers in DNA sciences, which are more gratuitously negative.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another unfinished book...:(. Possibilities but it just wasn't quite there for me.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed Edward Ball's writing style, and his serendipitous account of finding a cache of hair from long deceased family members made for an unbeatable premise for a book. Unfortunately Mr. Ball fell in love with his research into DNA and couldn't bear to leave of some of it to footnotes, where it would have found a better home. I did find his critique of the absolutism of science in the final chapter to be quite provocative and well worth reading. If you are curious about modern DNA science written from a layman's perspective, this is your book. If you are looking for a book about genealogy and family history, leave this one on the shelf.

[Sally · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as interesting as I thought it would be. Might have been better as an essay in a collection or as a series of magazine articles.

All he learned was that one set of genetic tests on the family hair he found hidden in an old desk showed Native American and African gene markers, then the same hair tested by different companies did not reproduce those results.

If you're interested in which parts of the DNA indicate ancestry, you might like all that discussion. I didn't find it kept my attention.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by the writing. The story is a thin one, woven between the science of DNA and some family history of the writer. Even though I didn't enjoy the scientific explanations (or "The Vocabulary" of genetics, as the author puts it), I did come away with a more skeptical view of DNA evidence. I like history and genealogy, so I enjoyed the discussions about identity, and trying to parse a family history from the DNA of people in the author's family.

All in all, enjoyable and I'm looking forward to reading Slaves in the Family.

[My Bookish Delights · Rating 2 out of 5]

I checked this book out for the family history part of DNA research. While that is the main topic, it was very hard to get past what he calls "The Vocabulary" which is scientific talk. Every time I thought I was going to just quit reading the book he would bring me back with some of his family history. I did end up finishing it although it was a struggle at times. He is a very good, descriptive writer; I just wasn't interested in that much of the scientific talk. It's worth finishing, however, for his interesting conclusions in the last chapter.

[Dawn]

Moving this to a "tried to read it but it sucked" shelf. I will not be finishing it. It seems to me through what I read (I skimmed later chapters) and what others mention that author went into this book with the express purpose of "disproving" the validity of genetics. And not just as an ancestral tool but in general. On skimming the last chapter, his motive is a bit more obvious, comparing the fear-induced awe of the church with how we should view science, all science not only genetics. And the family story interspersed is told with that high-handed aristocratic tone that smacks of bigotry.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting a bit less science-talk and a bit more family history, but it was fine. It does seem to come to the conclusion that DNA scientists really don't know what they're talking about when it comes to genetic history and medicine. This conclusion might be easier to take from someone who can spell Fort Detrick properly. (Seriously - is it that hard to look up? The book I'm reading now does the same thing. They're called factcheckers, people. Hire one.)

[Sarah Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very interested to see what this book would do, but was disappointed. It focused far too much on the scientific babble, and most of the information was given so quickly it went right over my head.
I did enjoy the family stories and the general concept. Perhaps it would have been better in a shorter format.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much complicated DNA information for me. If you are looking to learn what halpotypes, mtDNA, nucleotides, G-A-C-T, admixture, PCR, etc., etc. mean than you might enjoy this book. I got bogged down in the vocabulary and the intracacies of DNA testing. More of a "how-to" of DNA testing than a family story or even historical background of the development of DNA research.

[PastAllReason · Rating 1 out of 5]

To begin with I felt annoyed that the description presented on the flyleaf of the book did not match the reality of the substance of the book.

There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the contents of the book, but I did not find it persuasive or compelling. I would not have bought the book had I known.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

definitely chock full of info on genetic testing, coding, the human genome project, eugenics, etc. lots of great historical anecdotes and stories. however, he didn't have to turn it into a weak attack on the ivory tower of science. i don't think a 'genetic memoir' is the place for that. so, edward ball... should have saved that for another book. 'slavery in the family' is superb, though.