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The Memory Keeper's Daughter

A Novel
Pages
436
Published
2005
Language
English

Synopsis

A #1 New York Times bestseller by Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted novel of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love Kim Edwards’s stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century—in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago. A family drama, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets are finally uncovered.

About the author

K
Kim Edwards

Kim Edwards is an American novelist and short-story writer, born May 4, 1958, in Killeen, Texas. She holds a B.A. from Colgate University and an MFA in fiction and MA in linguistics from the University of Iowa, where she attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her debut story collection, The Secrets of a Fire King, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and won the Whiting Writers' Award and the Nelson Algren Award. Her first novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2005), spent over two years on t...

Characters

David HenryProtagonist

The orthopedic surgeon who delivers his own twins in a 1964 blizzard and, seeing that his daughter has Down syndrome, tells his nurse to institutionalize her and his wife that she died. An amateur photographer haunted by the childhood death of his sister.

Norah HenryProtagonist

David's wife, told her newborn daughter died at birth. She grieves a child who is alive, drinks, has an affair, and eventually builds a travel business of her own.

Caroline GillProtagonist

The nurse at the twins' birth. Instructed to take the baby to an institution, she leaves for Pittsburgh and raises Phoebe as her own daughter.

Paul HenryProtagonist

The healthy twin, raised by David and Norah, who grows up under the weight of an absence nobody will name and becomes a classical guitarist.

Phoebe HenrySupporting

The twin born with Down syndrome and given away at birth, raised in Pittsburgh by Caroline, and grown into a young woman who works, sings, and wants a life of her own.

All characters in The Memory Keeper's Daughter
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