“A Fatal Legacy,” by Lawrence Ingrassia, book review

When Regina Ingrassia died at age 42, leaving four children, her death seemed cataclysmic but random. “She was one of 318,500 Americans who died of cancer in 1968,” writes Lawrence Ingrassia, her second eldest. “It was tragic, but what was there to say?

Unfortunately, there is much more to say. “Cancer was far from over in my family,” Ingrassia writes in her new book, “A Fatal Inheritance.” Eventually, he would lose two sisters, a brother and a nephew to malignant tumors that seemed to appear out of nowhere. It would take years for researchers to be able to answer fundamental questions about the killer who stalked his family.