When celebrity biographer and true-crime writer James Pylant delved into the decades-long disappearance of his great-grandfather, he searched for the one relative who may have held the key to the mystery—only to find that she, too, had vanished.
 
Family Tree: A Journey of Identity, Secrets & DNA tells a true tale of betrayal, desertion, bigamy, illegitimacy, slavery, and murder deeply embedded into generations of a Southern family.
 
With in-depth genealogical research and shocking DNA testing results, the author chronicles the scandals and tragedies in his bloodline. His family's culture of secrecy and estrangement unfolds through candid interviews with relatives from both the white and black branches of the Pylant family tree. The journey concludes with meeting long-lost kin in Britain—a family reunion more than 300 years in the making.