Daughter of Family G. by Ami McKay Published by Knopf Canada, $29.95
review by Jodi DeLong
What would you do if you knew your family carried a genetic mutation that had resulted in many of your ancestors—and more recent relatives—having died of particular cancers? Would you get tested, wanting to know the risks for yourself and your family? And if you were positive for the trait, how would you live your life?
Ami McKay of Scots Bay NS is a talented and successful fiction writer, author of three best-selling novels, including The Birth House and The Witches of New York, among other works. Now she ventures into the world of non-fiction: specifically, of memoir, of a family tree that has been riddled with deaths from cancer for more than 100 years, and also studied by scientists for nearly as long.
More than a century ago, Ami’s great-great aunt, Pauline Gross of Ann Arbor, Michigan, told a local professor of pathology that she believed she would die young, as many of her family had done—and she knew what the cause of death would be. Intrigued by her comments, the pathologist began to trace her family tree and map out those who had fallen victim to specific cancers. He dubbed the family tree “Family G.” and his work, inspired by Pauline Gross—who did die young, at age 46—became a long, complex and thorough genealogy of cancer in one family. It took a century, but cancer researchers would finally isolate the genetic mutation that repeatedly turned up in the family: a mutation now named Lynch syndrome, which when present would lead to a higher vulnerability to certain cancers. A test could now confirm the presence of the mutation in an individual.
In 2001, recently married and also having recently given birth to her second son, Ami McKay was tested—one of the first in her extended family to do so—for Lynch syndrome. Her mother had already had cancer and many of her relatives had died young from colorectal, pancreatic, ovarian or endometrial cancer. Having found her calling as a creative writer, Ami created a radio documentary for CBC radio, called Daughter of Family G, which included a telephone call to the doctor who had done the test and who gave her the results during the call. The results were positive. Suddenly the world changed for Ami and her family.
This memoir has been exhaustively researched with the same kind of rigour that have marked Ami McKay’s fiction. Her writing skillfully weaves together the experiences and voices of relatives who have lived and died in the past, as well as those of her more immediate family, including her mother, who died in 2007. We get snippets of her life as a child in Michigan eavesdropping on her parents and other relatives, to school and university, a failed marriage that did yield “Eldest Son,” and ultimately finding true love and a new life in Scots Bay, NS, where she, husband Ian and “Younger Son” live in the former midwife’s house and the inspiration behind The Birth House.
Disclosure: Ami is a long-time friend, and I’m a long-time fan of her writing, but I’ve always striven to do fair reviews of her books. This may be her finest work to date. It’s fascinating reading, the snapshots of family members melded with snippets of her own life, and the science behind the research of Family G. Even if I didn’t know her, I still would have cried at various points throughout the book, including the disclosure that Eldest Son is positive for Lynch’s Syndrome.
Tears aside, ultimately, the book is a positive story of a family that has faced myriad health hurdles, but also has mapped ways to live—not just survive, but thrive—with the “what if” of potential cancer diagnoses in the future. It’s a book I will read again, and hope many others will read, too.