Publisher's Synopsis
In the early '80s, Moshe Shaltiel's father Daniel challenged him to uncover the truth of a claim that the Shaltiels were descended from King David, a family legend Daniel feared would otherwise die with him. Sceptical at first, Moshe Shaltiel quickly ended a lucrative career as an investment banker to pursue the mystery full time, embarking on what would become a twenty-year odyssey to uncover his family's ancestry. This book is the product of that journey and Moshe's innumerable visits to graves, libraries and temples in Spain, France, Israel, Greece, the Netherlands and the United States, as he struggled to find the missing threads of his lineage. Shaltiel found ancestors almost everywhere from Babylonian rulers to cousins of Charlemagne, Annie Oakley's husband, Holocaust survivors, an Israeli general and a deputy mayor of Chicago to name just a few. All of these disparate strains are woven together into a single tapestry that is at once vast, colourful and historic, presenting a panorama of the Sephardic Diaspora.
