Christopher Lukas

When Christopher (Kit) Lukas' mother died by her own hand when he was a small boy, she left him and his brother Tony to be raised by a doting grandmother and a confused and absent father. He and Tony went on for many years not knowing that her death had been a suicide; each member of this fractured family coped with the memories and the guilt in his or her own way.

As the details were buried deeper and deeper, Kit and Tony were often left to their own devices, alternately locking horns and finding solace in each other.
Each grew to be a man of substance: Kit became an award-winning television producer/​director specializing in documentaries and public television covering subjects from Handel to Yevtushenko, from Aspen to Pompeii. In 1987 Scribner published his
moving book, Silent Grief, a book about how to survive someone else's suicide. The message of Silent Grief: if you deny the truth of suicide or take on the burden of your loved one's self-inflicted death, you will become a victim of it; perhaps even continue
the chain of suicide yourself. Strangely, the publication of Silent Grief was the first time Kit and Tony spoke openly with each other about their mother's death 46 years earlier.

By that time J. Anthony (Tony) Lukas, peripatetic and driven, maintained an indelible, though stuttering connection with Kit and the rest of the family as he forged ahead as a gifted journalist. When Kit married and began a family of his own, Tony continued to move from job to job, from country to country, never quite satisfied with his circumstances, his work or his love life.

His efforts were rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize for reporting. He married in his late forties, and caught the brass ring when he won another Pulitzer, the National Book Award and the National Book Critic's Award for his ground-breaking, now classic, book about Boston's de-segregation, Common Ground. Still, happiness eluded Tony as the family legacy of depression settled in. It finally captured him for good, and he committed suicide in June, 1997, just as he had completed his latest tome, nine years in the making.

Blue Genes, for all of its eloquent sadness, is a surprisingly uplifting book. For anyone who's ever feared that personal history ultimately dictates life's trajectory, Kit Lukas's story of self-determination in the face of the most troubling genetic odds offers hope. Readers will finish this book grieving Tony's early demise, but admiring and honoring Kit's gentle fortitude.