ACCIDENTAL BROTHERS

The riveting story of two sets of identical twins separated at birth and improbably reunited as adults, a dream case for exploring nature and nurture.

Accidental Brothers tells the unique story of two sets of identical Colombian twin brothers who discovered at age 25 that they were mistakenly raised as fraternal twins - when they were not even biological brothers. Due to an oversight that presumably occurred in the hospital nursery, one twin in each pair was switched with a twin in the other pair. The result was two sets of unrelated "fraternal" twins - Jorge and Carlos, who were raised in the lively city of Bogotá; and William and Wilber, who were raised in the remote rural village of La Paz, 150 miles away. Their parents and siblings were aware of the enormous physical and behavioral differences between the members of each set, but never doubted that the two belonged in their biological families.

Everyone's life unraveled when one of the twins - William - was mistaken by a young woman for his real identical twin, Jorge. Her "discovery" led to the truth - that the alleged twins were not twins at all, but rather unrelated individuals who ended up with the wrong families.

Blending great science and human interest, Accidental Brothers by Nancy L. Segal and Yesika S. Montoya will inform and entertain anyone interested in how twin studies illuminate the origins of human behavior, as well as mother-infant identification and the chance events that can have profound consequences on our lives.

A twin herself, Segal holds a PhD from the University of Chicago in social and behavioral sciences, and degrees in both literature and psychology from Boston University. She is currently a professor of psychology and the director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton, which she founded in 1991. She has authored over two hundred chapters and journal articles, and her four books include the critically-acclaimed Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior (Dutton/Plume 2013) and Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins (Harvard University Press, 2007). Her book, Born Together-Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study (Harvard University Press, 2012) won the prestigious 2013 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association, for which she delivered a major address in August 2014. She has been twice featured in The New York Times and was a guest on Oprah, Good Morning America, and The Martha Stewart Show. Segal frequently lectures about twins and twin studies on international stages across the world and has professional contacts that span the globe.