Book #15

TANGLED ROOTS

by GG Vandagriff

This book was lent to me by my mother, and she borrowed it from my sister, #3. It's a mystery novel whose "detectives" are genealogists (I think it's part of a series, too). I would have never thought to solve crimes using simple genealogy, but she did, and she didn't do too bad of a job. It was not the best book I've ever read, but it wasn't the worst, either.

What I found most interesting is that the author wrote this book in the early 90's, so of coarse, that was back before the days of internet research, and it's all done using phones and faxes and actual libraries. The author, after writing the book, became ill and lost her memory and ability to write, I believe (I can't find the book just now to read what it said for sure). Several years ago, she had recovered and was going through her computer files, only to discover this book she'd written and never had published. So she rewrote it, keeping it in the same mid 90's time period.

The only part of the book that really bothered me was the somewhat romantic attraction between two cousins... even though they were like 9th cousins 4 times removed or something (in other words, very distant... hey, even my own parents are very distantly related... could explain a lot about me, eh?), they still referred to each other as cousins, introduced one another as cousins, and all I could think was... Ewwww.... thank goodness the author is LDS so the actual romance was basically non-existent (the attraction was there, but the romance was not), because.... Ewwww. Not as Ewwww as The Love Guru movie, which I highly do NOT recommend, but still Ewwww.

About the time my mom starts referring to my dad as her cousin... it's all over with for me!