Who's Your Daddy, Baby by Lisa Pell
ISBN: 9781608300778
Lori Pomay is 45 and has tried to have a child to no avail and the doctors are now trying in vitro and have to do all the blood work and other expensive tests. That's when she finds out her father is not really her father as the blood types are wrong.
Her mother is dead and she only has letters to try to figure out who her real father is. She uses facebook and other social online sites to try to track her potential father down.
She is able to trace back to the 1620's and the relatives that had come to the US and from where. I found this information interesting as I do some knitting for a 1620 settlement in my area.
There are quite a few that could potentially be her father so she further investigates their origins.
Love the descriptions of how she was raised in the Appalachian Mountains and without the modern accommodations others in town had. Raising and canning their own food, cleaning and cooking while her mother was a teacher at $60 a month.
Although the 1950's it feels like the 1930's still.
Love the new things I've learned: LSD testing on soldiers, who would've thought.
To think Lori and her sister had stored all her mother's things away in a box.
The trouble she went through to chronically put all the names into a spreadsheet to maybe be able to then pick out which one was her mother, just astounds me that she went to all that trouble.
I didn't care for all the narrative part of this book, 99.9%, would've liked to have had more conversation along the way.
There was so much to learn about DNA testings and why things came out as they did. I rate this book a 4 out of 5, interesting subject. ( )

The lovely and emotional roller coaster ride story of Lori Pomay. Whilst undergoing tests for genetic testing prior to having IVF Lori establishes that the man she has grown up with as her father is not fact her father. This is the journey of that discovery. Coming to terms with the news, and the path Lori takes as she sets upon trail of establishing her biological identity.

I loved the modern research aspect of the story line, which is based loosely on true events. I loved the mix of medical data, and the complexities of genetics and the use of social media, which has changed the way in which individuals can correspond and research ancestors and missing relatives with a click of a button.

Most of all I loved the mixed emotions and the complexities of dealing with the financial issues of raising funds for treatment, emotionally coming to terms with the realisation that perhaps it was simply too late to start a family and then the added issues of Lori's own parentage.

Without a doubt one of my best reads for the year. ( )