I spit in the little test tube, sealed it up and sent my DNA off to be processed at one of those ancestry labs. I wanted to find out if all those family stories were true.

My father claimed he was of noble French ancestry. That’s why I’ve always felt a strong kinship to Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, who wasn’t really French since she was born in Austria. My father also claimed Native American lineage — Cherokee, to be exact. It’s possible I got my love of writing from Sequoyah, a Cherokee brave. He created the Cherokee writing system, but was accused of witchcraft for using magic to communicate

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