Most of us grow up thinking we know who we are and where we come from. Lisa Alther's mother hailed from New York, her father from Virginia, and every day they reenacted the Civil War at home. Then a babysitter with bad teeth warned Lisa about the Melungeons: six-fingered child-snatchers who hid in caves. Forgetting about these creepy kidnappers until she had a daughter of her own, Lisa learned they were actually an isolated group of dark-skinned people - often with extra thumbs - living in East Tennessee. But who were they? Descendants of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, or of shipwrecked Portuguese or Turkish sailors? Or the children of frontiersmen, African slaves, and Native Americans? Learning that a cousin had his extra thumbs removed, Lisa set out to discover who these mysterious Melungeons really were - and why her grandmother wouldn't let her visit their Virginia relatives. Were there Melungeons in the family tree? Lisa assembled a hoard of clues over the years, but DNA testing finally offered answers.

Part sidesplitting travelogue, part how (and how not) to climb your family tree, KINFOLKS shimmers with wicked humor, showing just how wacky and wonderful our human family really is.

1) A work in progress: My family tree, in the form of a circle, tracing my ancestors as far back as the sixteenth century (large version not available, sorry)	2) Polly Phipps, granddaughter of "Portuguese Indian" Betty Reeves, and her husband, Union Army sergeant John Wesley Swindall (the distaff grandparents of my grandmother Reed as well as the great aunt and great uncle of my grandfather Reed)	3) Bob Artrip, one of my mysterious Virginia cousins
4) The lynching of Murderous Mary in Erwin, Tennessee	5) Two Melungeon boys	6) My grandmother, Hattie Elizabeth Vanover Reed
7) Grandmother Reed (left) with my retired Latin teacher, Miss Elmore, in Giza, Egypt, on a tour of the Holy Land	8) My father, John Shelton Reed	9) My mother, Alice Greene Reed
10) Climbing a family tree at one and a half years old	11) At age 14, in my band uniform, holding the family's ancestral clarinet. Beside me stands my best friend Martha, who will die in a car accident several months later.	12) At age 17, doing my best to impersonate Scarlett O'Hara, before a night of waltzing at the country club
13) At age 24 in Vermont, bearing the next generation	14) At age 41, water-skiing in the spot where we all spotted Champ, Lake Champlain's camera-shy plesiosaur	15) In 2006, in front of the family cabin

"How well-timed Kinfolks is, when so many people are trying to trace their ancestors, and find their forebears, as Lisa Alther has done. It reads like a detective story, clues in all kinds of improbable places, leading to astonishing conclusions. . . . Some people may be shocked at the revelations of how varied our family tree is- the human family- but more will be intrigued, and I cannot imagine anyone remaining uninterested in this most engaging book, written with the dry humor of Alther at her best."

- Doris Lessing

"A heartily welcomed contribution to our understanding of the place of race in our country's history. . . . This story needs to be told, as it is emblematic of so much of the mixing that has gone on... I have no doubt that with the author's gift for storytelling it will reach a wide audience."

- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"The kind of book that stays with you for years after you read the last line. Tantalizingly perceptive, it seeps into your bones and becomes a part of you. It is a personal story, a search for discovery and for identity, and is very much about us all."

- Tahir Shah, author of The Caliph's House

"I more than love how Alther has turned the exclusive pursuit of genealogy into a bold adventure and led it into the uncharted territory of inclusion. . . . Very funny. I equally enjoyed the behind-the-scenes view of how and why a novelist writes what she writes when she writes it and how it can open the way into the important next "assignment"- which Kinfolks certainly seems to have been for her."

- Gail Godwin, author of Father Melancholy's Daughter

"Kinfolks is fascinating- genealogy, backstory, memoir, and cosmic search. In the great, guitar-picking tradition of talking blues, it tells a long and winding tale with the laugh-out-loud, kick-you-in-the-gut humor we count on from Lisa Alther."

- Honor Moore, author of Red Shoes

"With her characteristic insight and wit, Lisa Alther describes the exhilarations and disappointments familiar to all who undertake similar quests for their roots, and she clearly demonstrates that, even though each discovery leads to more questions, the journey is clearly as worthwhile as the desired destination."

- Wayne Winkler, author of Walking Toward the Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia

"Kinfolks is an honest and funny story of the role of race in American culture. While you laugh and cringe at the tale she weaves, Alther exposes the realities of the interracial history of this country. With her sharp southern wit, she crushes all of our favorite illusions about racial identity."

- W. Ralph Eubanks, author of Ever Is a Long Time

BOOKLIST *STARRED REVIEW* Alther, Lisa. Kinfolks: Falling off the Family Tree. Apr. 2007. 264p. illus. Arcade, $25 (1-55970-832-8). 813. Trading on the title of her first novel, the best-selling Kinflicks (1976), Alther presents Kinfolks, her first work of nonfiction, a wise, funny inquiry into the complexities of inheritance. A Tennessean with a New Yorker mother and a Virginian father, Alther grew up feeling like the Civil War incarnate and was mystified by her Cadillac-driving grandmother, who, for all her pride in her blueblood Virginia heritage, refused to contact her back-home relatives. But what induces Alther to turn genealogical sleuth is a cousin’s declaration that he is a Melungeon. Melungeons are reputedly multiracial Appalachians sometimes burdened with six-fingered hands and a reputation for the evil eye. Controversial theories suggest African, Portuguese, Turkish, and/or Native American descent. High-spirited Alther’s curiosity sends her to dusty courthouse archives, Native American casinos, and locales across Europe and Turkey, and her findings enable her to bring historical Appalachia into focus as a landing place for refugees from all over Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Drolly hilarious and incisive, Alther attempts to decode family secrets, gets to know self-declared Melungeons, and considers her unexpected ties to Pocahontas, ultimately presenting a provocative take on the South’s obsession with skin color. —Donna Seaman LIBRARY JOURNAL Alther, Lisa. Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree. Arcade, dist. by Little, Brown. Apr. 2007. c.264p. bibliog. ISBN 1-59970-832-8 [ISBN 978-1-59970-832-6]. $25. AUTOBIOG The Melungeons are a multiracial Appalachian population group saddled with obscure origins and unkind mythologizing from without. Novelist Alther (Kinflicks), herself a child of Appalachian east Tennessee, first encountered Melungeons as the freakish, child-nabbing monsters of a babysitter's threat. Later in life, her grandmother's evasiveness regarding Virginia relatives sparked Alther's interest in exploring her lineage. This lively, engaging volume describes the resulting pursuit. Part breezy memoir, part genealogical mystery tour, and part anthropological exploration, it shuttles readers between Kingsport, TN, and Burlington, VT; on fact-finding and self-finding missions to England, France, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey (the last three on a single trip by sailing across the Atlantic!); and to Beaufort, SC, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and a years-long crisscrossing of the American Southeast. The journey is a delight, full of Alther's arch observations on folks and folkways both contemporary and historical. Readers will learn about the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island, NC; DNA testing; snake handling; the descendants of Pocahontas; and quite a lot about Melungeons. In our increasingly multiracial society, Kinfolks should be of more than just regional interest. Recommended for public libraries. -Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington Libs., OH