Reading DNA – Did Not Anticipate I was immediately struck by the authenticity of the voice. This isn’t a ghost or paperback writer or a workshopped vanity project. This is the author’s authentic voice with all the bravado, wit, heart, bitterness, and armored anxiety you’d experience if you met him in person. This does not make the narrative any less jarring – it makes the puzzling maze intimate and significantly personal to the final page.
Neither is this book a simple monologue – the repeated motifs of gravity, particles, transport, and cultural references both frame and give it depth. Steve and Becky use science, faith, optimism, frustrated aspirations and, in the end, an unlikely quiet confidence to reconcile how he came to be with who he is. In the process they teach us that the definition of family can be fragile, often painful, but ultimately it is a choice that gives us voice.