by Jeff Wheelwright
W.W. Norton & Company, January 2012
How could the life of a beautiful young Hispano woman living in Colorado’s picturesque San Luis Valley be cut short by a genetic mutation that is characteristic of Jews? The quest to answer this question is at the heart of The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess, a new book by science writer Jeff Wheelwright.
Twenty-eight-year-old Shonnie Medina died of breast cancer in 1999. She was Hispano, an ethnicity comprising both Spanish and Native American ancestors. But Medina’s fatal mutation, called BRCA1.185delAG, had been passed from generation to generation of Jews for 2,500 years. In The Wandering Gene, Wheelwright delves into the genetic history of Medina and her family, and in doing so expands the story ...
