That connection is threatened by the different experiences Vanessa and Richard had with Vanessa's mother, those unanswered questions which may in turn threaten the burgeoning romantic connection between Vanessa and Kris. Getting over some initial jitters and apprehensions on both sides, Vanessa and the Hendricks end up making an emotional connection as family. Much like Vanessa, Kris is no longer with any biological family after his parents - his father Richard's best friend - passed away when Kris was in college, he having since spent such time with the Hendricks in they being his surrogate family. The only other person who has been invited for that extended stay at the same time is family friend, New York corporate lawyer Kris who would be able to give Vanessa a lift. Discussing it on both sides and the two eventually meeting, Vanessa accepts Richard's offer for her to come spend a few days with him and his family in Barrington to get to know them before she meets the extended family who will descend on the house on Christmas Eve. In taking an ancestry test, Vanessa not only learns her ethnic makeup, but that there is a positive paternal test in the company's system, her biological father being Richard Hendricks, who lives an hour's drive away in Barrington, CT complete with wife Pauline and three teen to adolescent aged children, Caitlin, Aidan and Emilia. She never knew her father, and her single mother passed away when Vanessa was nine, before Vanessa could ask her anything about her father. Vanessa Hall is a New York based social worker working for a non-profit foster child placement service, she doing so to pay it forward in being brought up in the foster care system herself. Verdict:Ī very powerful family tree management tool which comes crammed with essential features and functionality.It's the Christmas season. (If you'd like a count of the surnames in your family tree, say, or a graph showing the distribution of family ages at death then you'll find them here.)Ī set of useful reports provides further ways to analyse your tree, most notably highlighting possible errors: people who've lived "too long", have no parents, have duplicate named children, have events after death, and so on.Īnd the program is rounded off with plenty of small but welcome extras, such as its ability to password-protect your tree and ensure its details remain private. There's an ancestors tree an interactive timeline lists of sources, photos, stories and more, and handy pages of statistics and family details. You might choose to show all generations, just immediate family, maybe those born after a particular date there are options to hide descendants, ancestors, siblings and more you can show or hide dates, photos, genders and so on there are even built-in themes to change the background and colour scheme.Ī host of other views are just a click away. The core family tree view is very configurable. Relationships are reasonably flexible: children can be "natural", "adopted" or foster", a spouse can be "current" or "former", an "Unrelated" option allows you to connect friends, witnesses or others you might need to reference later.Įven a basic tool like adding an image manages to impress, with support for scanners, one or two basic editing options ("Rotate", "Sepia"), printing, slideshows and more. An extensive "Details" section allows you to add the name, birth and death dates, nationality, religion, social security number, title, education, description, confirmation date, first communion and more. There's plenty of depth to these options, too. The program imports existing trees from GEDCOM files, or you can easily start from scratch, adding individuals and a host of details on them: relationships, photos and stories, video, audio, general attachments, even genetics. My Family Tree is an excellent tool for recording just about every possible detail on your family history.