I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday story from Up First.

Earlier this year, eight siblings gathered at a beachfront resort in Fort Lauderdale for a reunion.

Like some families, this one makes T-shirts.

Rina, a retired college professor, hands them out.

If someone take a picture of Joe with his t-shirt. The t-shirt features a photo of the sibling's

father. He's a bald man with glasses. Rather pleasant picture. Thin lips, of course. This is Gil

Brodsky, another sibling.

He reads the speech bubble next to his father's mouth.

Says Gilbert was my favorite.

The t-shirt is a joke in more ways than one.

Gil never knew his biological father.

Neither did anyone else at the table, including his half-sister, Dina Harris.

I don't know him.

I mean, I think he was a bit eccentric, so who knows?

I mean, it must have been sitting somewhere in his mind that what he did was odd.

Until a decade ago, none of these siblings knew any of the others existed.

And yet, here they are, at a family reunion.

But not like one you've ever heard of.

This is the story of a secret family, a group of strangers who uncovered a decades-old deception,

then out of that built genuine family connections,

turning what could have been a catastrophe into something affirming and meaningful.

NPR's Frank Langfit spent the last year interviewing 18 members of this unique family.

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