The Juggler's Children

“With this daring act of tracing her genetic genealogy all the way back to its widely scattered origins, Carolyn Abraham redefines the meaning of the expression ‘know thyself.’ The Juggler’s Children is as exciting as any explorer’s account of the discovery of a new land, as carefully written as a fine novel, as rigorous as it is entertaining. But its greatest achievement is its astonishing, profoundly moving findings, its proof that the human race is, in fact, one family after all.” —Ian Brown, award-winning author of The Boy in the Moon

“The Juggler’s Children is simultaneously a compelling family mystery and brilliant science writing. As she cracks her own family’s genetic code, Carolyn Abraham makes the complexities of DNA and the genetic linkages that bind us immediately accessible. Deciphering the Y chromosomes of her male relatives takes her from the tea plantations of India’s Nilgiri Hills to the sugar cane estates of Jamaica’s north coast, and from simple questions to the hard truths of genealogy, where paternity can come as a shock and an ancestor who joined a traveling circus may have been escaping a criminal past. The book, quite simply, is a great read.” —Dr. Miriam Shuchman, prize-winning author of The Drug Trial

“Combining traditional journalistic digging with the cutting edge science of genetic genealogy, Carolyn Abraham takes us on a witty and engaging journey across India, China, Europe and Jamaica in search of her polyglot family ancestry. Along the way, she separates legend and fact, individual and group identity, deftly unspooling the why? in the Y chromosome. In the end, she vividly demonstrates that inside the microcosmic gene pool of a single Canadian family—and thus all families—we will find the vast history of humanity. Whether princes or paupers, slaves or slave-drivers, we’re all the same under the skin.” —James FitzGerald, author of What Disturbs Our Blood, winner of the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize