The secrets we all have and will never tell

7. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

I know I should sit down and write an extensive review, but my brain hurts and I can't think of anything that hasn't already been said by others. The set-up is this: Dr. David Henry is forced to deliver his own twins during a freak Kentucky snowstorm in 1964. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy and normal. *insert gimp growl* His daughter, however, has Down Syndrome. Having lived through the early death of his sister at a young age, David decides to "spare" his wife the future loss of their daughter -- he hands her off to the nurse and asks her to take the baby to a home for the "feeble-minded". Instead of telling his wife what he did, he tells her the girl died. What he doesn't count on is that Norah has as much difficulty dealing with their daughter "dying" as an infant as he imagined she would raising a "retarded" daughter. Like the function of the camera Norah gives David the following Valentine's Day, the author gives us snapshots of the lives of the Henrys and of Caroline, the nurse who chose to raise the baby on her own in another city rather than leave her in an "awful" institution. Just as the book is a set of photographs for us, so too do photographs dominate the lifes of the characters.

In sum, I liked it. The overall theme is obvious but not in-your-face obvious. The book was fairly well-crafted, in my opinion. If you can get your hands on an inexpensive used copy (like I did) or if you can get it at your local library, go ahead and give it a read. Or you can borrow mine if you're nearby.

By the way, this is my first book in the Jamie/Aunt Dawn Reading Contest (JADRC). To my knowledge, the mini-redhead has not completed her first book. Sheesh! I stretched it out over two weeks to give her a chance to get ahead of me.