The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess
Race, Religion, and DNA
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Narrated by:
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Eve Bianco
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By:
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Jeff Wheelwright
About this listen
A brilliant and emotionally resonant exploration of science and family history.
A vibrant young Hispano woman, Shonnie Medina, inherits a breast-cancer mutation known as BRCA1.185delAG. It is a genetic variant characteristic of Jews. The Medinas knew they were descended from Native Americans and Spanish Catholics, but they did not know that they had Jewish ancestry as well. The mutation most likely sprang from Sephardic Jews hounded by the Spanish Inquisition. The discovery of the gene leads to a fascinating investigation of cultural history and modern genetics by Dr. Harry Ostrer and other experts on the DNA of Jewish populations.
Set in the isolated San Luis Valley of Colorado, this beautiful and harrowing book tells of the Medina family’s 500-year passage from medieval Spain to the American Southwest and of their surprising conversion from Catholicism to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1980s. Rejecting conventional therapies in her struggle against cancer, Shonnie Medina died in 1999. Her life embodies a story that could change the way we think about race and faith.
©2012 Jeff Wheelwright (P)2013 Audible Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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poor narration
- By Jane on 08-23-22
By: Rachel E. Gross
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Asleep
- The Forgotten Epidemic That Became Medicine’s Greatest Mystery
- By: Molly Caldwell Crosby
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.
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Scary, and still unsolved, medical mystery
- By joyce on 12-14-14
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Pale Rider
- The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
- By: Laura Spinney
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted - and often permanently altered - global politics, race relations, and family structures while spurring innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts.
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A Predilection for Those in the Prime of Life
- By Cynthia on 02-12-18
By: Laura Spinney
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One Child
- The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment
- By: Mei Fong
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birthrates would help lift China's poorest and increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong has spent years documenting the policy's repercussions on every sector of Chinese society.
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Best Book Club Discussion Ever!!
- By Rachael W. Schettenhelm on 05-01-17
By: Mei Fong
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A Warrior of the People
- How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America’s First Indian Doctor
- By: Joe Starita
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree - becoming the first Native American doctor in US history. She earned her degree 31 years before women could vote and 35 years before Indians could become citizens in their own country. This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice and then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people.
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A Remarkable Woman
- By Jean on 11-27-16
By: Joe Starita
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The Fatal Strain
- On the Trail of Avian Flu and the Coming Pandemic
- By: Alan Sipress
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When avian flu began spreading across Asia in the early 2000s, it reawakened fears that had lain dormant for nearly a century. During the outbreak's deadliest years, Alan Sipress chased the virus as it infiltrated remote jungle villages and teeming cities and saw its mysteries elude the world's top scientists. In The Fatal Strain, Sipress details how socioeconomic and political realities in Asia make it the perfect petri dish in which the fast-mutating strain can become easily communicable among humans.
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Narrator comments
- By Don on 01-10-10
By: Alan Sipress
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Changing the Way We Die
- Compassionate End-of-Life Care and the Hospice Movement
- By: Sheila Himmel, Fran Smith
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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There’s a quiet revolution happening in the way we die. More than 1.5 million Americans a year die in hospice care - nearly 44 percent of all deaths - and a vast industry has sprung up to meet the growing demand. Once viewed as a New Age indulgence, hospice is now a $14 billion business and one of the most successful segments in health care. Changing the Way We Die, by award-winning journalists Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel, is the first book to take a broad, penetrating look at the hospice landscape.
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Sadly, not very engaging.
- By Debra S. Long on 06-16-18
By: Sheila Himmel, and others
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Yellow Dirt
- An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed
- By: Judy Pasternak
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded an entire tribe of people. The Navajo worked unprotected in the uranium mines that fueled the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Long after these mines were abandoned, Navajos in all four corners of the Reservation (which borders Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) continued grazing their animals on sagebrush flats riddled with uranium that had been blasted from the ground.
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Dirty little secret of nuclear development
- By Buretto on 08-13-20
By: Judy Pasternak
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Knocking on Heaven's Door
- The Path to a Better Way of Death
- By: Katy Butler
- Narrated by: Katy Butler
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Like so many of us, award-winning writer Katy Butler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retirements before dying peacefully at home. Then her father suffered a stroke that left him incapable of easily finishing a sentence or showering without assistance. Her mother was thrust into full-time caregiving, and Katy became one of the 24 million Americans who help care for aging parents. In an effort to correct a minor and non - life threatening heart arrhythmia, doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker.
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A better way to narrate a book about death?
- By MAUREEN on 10-21-13
By: Katy Butler
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Headstrong
- 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World
- By: Rachel Swaby
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 2013, the New York Times published an obituary for Yvonne Brill. It began: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, and took eight years off from work to raise three children.” It wasn’t until the second paragraph that readers discovered why the Times had devoted several hundred words to her life: Brill was a brilliant rocket scientist who invented a propulsion system to keep communications satellites in orbit, and had recently been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
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Role models for young women
- By mtsuda90 on 06-25-16
By: Rachel Swaby
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Tomorrowland
- Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact
- By: Steven Kotler
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, Discover bestselling author Steven Kotler has written extensively about those pivotal moments when science fiction became science fact...and fundamentally reshaped the world. Now he gathers the best of his best, updated and expanded upon, to guide listeners on a mind-bending tour of the far frontier, and how these advances are radically transforming our lives.
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Covers a lot of different topics in many industries
- By ErnieA on 06-27-15
By: Steven Kotler
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The Secret History of the War on Cancer
- By: Devra Davis Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies, a legacy that persists to this day.
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Silly Book
- By Adam Smith on 12-24-14
What listeners say about The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- DbD
- 10-18-13
Intersection of DNA, History & Human Interest
This is a fascinating journalistic account of how the deadly, and usually rare BRCA gene occurs among populations who don't know they have Jewish ancestry. The story is told unflinchingly, with numerous digressions into history, science, and religious belief that add dimension and context. It is also (unwittingly) a pretty chilling indictment of the poor quality of our science education in K-12, and the consequences that can have on insular or marginalized populations. Although the author attributes the failure of the young woman to seek any conventional treatment for her disease to stubbornness and religious conviction, the major underpinning is a lack of adequate science education. The narrator gets mixed reviews from me. While her voice was wonderful, her many mispronunciations of Spanish and Indian words and names was distracting. Overall, the book was well worth the credit!
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1 person found this helpful
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- nm1234
- 03-02-21
The narrator is terrible
I liked the story, but the narrator was terrible. She couldn’t adequately pronounce simple Spanish words and names.
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- Tammy Contreras
- 07-11-23
Great story
This is my family and I love them.
Although I did not like the narrator, I did enjoy the hearing about my family’s history. I am happy and proud to have this book. My great auntie is truly amazingly brave to share the story of my cousin and her husband family.
Complete honor and respect
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- Don A. Mondragon
- 07-12-17
Not really true about the people of the Valley
We are from this area and it's hard to believe what was said about the people who live there. Not everyone is ignorant as the family in this story.
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- Margaret
- 08-26-13
The Wandering story...
Jeff Wheelwright covers a lot of ground here - from the Hispano communities in NE New Mexico to Ashkenazi Jewish history - modern and ancient. He zeros in on the story of the life and death of Shonnie Medina and segues gracefully into larger story of the history of genetic testing and the rather bitter sounding debate among New Mexico's anthropologists about whether a form of covert Judaism was practiced there by settlers arrived from Mexico. And more.
If all of this sounds chaotic, it isn't. It's the skillful handing of the backstory a reader needs to understand how a 28 year-old Jehovah's Witness in New Mexico died from a mutation in the DNA of a Semitic woman about twenty-four hundred years ago, how the mutation traveled and what can (or can't) be done by and for those carrying it.
The book was fascinating. Recommend.
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8 people found this helpful