Mother's Day is this Sunday and several genealogy sites are offering sales on DNA testing. 23 and Me and Ancestry.com are both running specials that end on May 13. Now would be a good time to participate.

I read the new book by Stephanie Perkins, Murder Once Removed, which is a genealogy mystery. It was a nice read, and if you like mysteries and genealogy, this will entertain you.

I also finished Jennifer Roberson's The Gown. For those of you who have family mysteries--in other words, want to know more about certain members--this book sheds light on what we do and do not know about those we hold most dear. This book is not a genealogical study, but it is a granddaughter's search to better understand a grandmother who has suddenly become a stranger to her. By doing so, she unearths a history of her grandmother she never knew. It is a wonderful story of three remarkable women who survived WWII and make lives for themselves. I highly recommend it. By the synopsis I just used, you can understand why I would review it on a genealogy website. So many people start their ancestry research with "I was always told..." only to find out totally different information. I kept thinking about that when I was reading this book. What we think is true and what is true are not always necessarily the same. I have discovered that being fluid in your thinking is one of the requirements to doing research, especially when it comes to family history.

Kristi