Portman's dad also quite the success story
From left, Avner Hershlag, Natalie Portman and Shelley Hershlag arrive at the 16th annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards on Jan. 14, 2011. Credit: AP
Natalie Portman isn't the only talent in her family - her father, the Yale-educated Dr. Avner Hershlag, is a professor at North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine at Hofstra, director of the donor-egg program and medical director of the in vitro fertilization program at North Shore-LIJ's Center for Human Reproduction in Manhasset.
And now he's a novelist on top of that.
"I've always written," says the author of more than 60 scientific papers and 25 chapters in medical texts, who recently self-published the medical thriller "Misconception" and also wrote a previous, unpublished novel. "Writing is a passion," Hershlag says.
In "Misconception," the first lady's fertility specialist, Dr. Anya Krim, delivers a grossly deformed baby of indeterminate sex. Krim's investigation into the conception leads her to FBI DNA fingerprinting, genetically altered embryos, a senator's pregnant daughter who's been in a coma for two years, and pointed questions of scientific ethics."Why I write is that I have a keen interest in people's life stories. I get very immersed in their personal journeys and their quest to have a family.And as for his novel, Hershlag assures he didn't have a surrogate: "The book is 100 percent written and rewritten by me."''
- Frank Lovece
