The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

School is a mixture of joy, terror, work, excitement, boredom, anxiety, fun, and Kim Edwards’s stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and to keep her birth a secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is an astonishing tale of redemptive love.

Reviews:

“Kim Edwards has created a tale of regret and redemption, of honest emotion, of characters haunted by their past. This is simply a beautiful book.”
—Jodi Picoult

“Anyone would be struck by the extraordinary power and sympathy of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.”
—The Washington Post

“Edwards is a born novelist. . . . Rich with psychological detail and the nuances of human connection.”
—Chicago Tribune

 

About the Author:

Kim Edwards is the author of the short-story collection The Secrets of a Fire King, which was shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. She has won both the Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award and teaches writing at the University of Kentucky.

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