One instance of grief can be difficult enough to cope with, but for Lawrence Ingrassia, losing multiple family members was not only devastating but perplexing. Typical discussions surrounding inheritance may include heirlooms or estates — not rare tumors in the cheeks of toddlers, as was the case for Ingrassia’s two-year-old nephew. After he lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to different types of cancer, Ingrassia was unsure whether his family’s generational heartbreak was merely misfortune or if there was some other cause.

In his book A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery, Ingrassia weaves his own family history with a history of cancer research. Part memoir, part medical thriller, Ingrassia’s work begins in the 1960s with Dr. Frederick Pei Li and Dr. Joseph Fraumeni Jr., groundbreaking researchers and physicians who would later uncover links between genetics and cancer.