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Imagine this: long before you were born, before Mom even knew you existed, your adult height was already determined.

Your hair and eye color were both set. The possibility of baldness and illness was there within you. The length of your fingers, the hue of your skin, and the size of your shoe were all resolved.

And if doctors had the technology then that they have now, they could have told you where your 10-times-great-grandmother on your mother's walked. This is just one of the intriguing truths in the new book "The Genetic Strand" by Edward Ball.

When an elderly relative died and her heir didn't want the battered antique furniture, Edward Ball leaped at the chance to own a bit of his family history. A bedraggled desk was in that inheritance, and it was a curiosity.

What it held was more so.

Inside a secret drawer, Ball found small packages of hair dated from the early-to-mid 1800s, samples from relatives long gone. Because of prior research, Ball realized the DNA treasure trove he'd found. Fascinated, he took the samples to laboratories to learn more about his forebears and himself.

Every living thing has its own DNA; genomes are the difference between you and, say, your sister, your boss, and your dog. Your DNA contains bits of your parents, of course, as well as biologically coded markers from ancestors through your mother's lineage and a surprising amount of "junk": vestiges of long-gone viruses, evolutionary changes and other pieces of DNA that your body no longer needs.

Through his own sleuthing and the use of several different laboratory tests, Ball learned a few things about his ancestry. His "solidly-white" family had had at least one long-ago African American relative. Native American blood trickled through the Ball family as well.

And -- although it wasn't a suspicious presence -- lethal amounts of known poisons tainted several members in Ball's past lineage and might even have contributed to their deaths.

"The Genetic Strand" is a mixed bag of a book. Part of it is steeped in heavy science that is, at best, hard to understand. Ball even apologizes for this at one point in the book and promises the reader that better things are to come. That promise is why I stuck with "The Genetic Strand," even though I was totally befuddled with the uber-scientific droning.

Nobody tells a story like author Ball. Even though you'll probably never meet Ball or any of his family, the way he tells their story makes you care about what happened and makes you want to know more. The mixture of hard science and personal narrative is what makes this book work. Without Ball's tale-telling talents, "The Genetic Ball" might as well be a textbook.

If you're fascinated with the science of heredity, if you're a genealogist or if you just want a good story and you don't mind skipping confusing parts to get to it, this is a great book to read. "The Genetic Strand" is a good way to tie up some time.

"The Genetic Strand" by Edward Ball, Simon & Schuster, $25, 288 pages.