When Jeremy B. Jones first found his ancestor’s journals written in a strange sort of code, he found it amusing to learn the random details of how a 19th-century man spent his days. But soon, the journals became so much more. He began researching his ancestor’s history and putting together a fuller picture of his life. Told in alternating chapters between memoir and his ancestor’s story, Cipher delves into bigger questions around knowing his family history and how that impacts him in the present.