Summer Reading Review: The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards

This is one of the most moving books I have read in a long time. It came out awhile ago and was on the NY Times Best Sellers list but I resisted reading it because I didn't think I would like the subject matter.

The story begins with a beloved doctor's wife going into labor in the middle of an unexpected and rare Kentucky snowstorm. Because their obstetrician is waylaid by the extreme weather, the doctor is forced to deliver his own children--although he and his wife are expecting one baby, he is surprised when a daughter follows her twin brother. However, the doctor and the attending nurse quickly realize that the baby girl has Down's Syndrome or, as children with special needs were called during the 1960's, when the book takes place, " a mongoloid."

At the time, the lives of these children were not as they are today. For one thing, they usually didn't survive the heart problems and other serious physical issues they were born with. Also, their quality of life was much more minimal, too, because they did not have access to formal public education and job training. Knowing this, and having lived with a sister who had similar issues, the doctor hands his daughter over to the nurse and instructs her to bring her to a home for "retarded" children. When she arrives at the facility, though, and observes the poor level of care that the residents receive, she cannot bear to leave the newborn. Instead, she raises the child herself in a new city while the doctor tells his wife that the baby was dead at birth.

However, the story recounts how the baby girl is always on the mind of her birth mother and father. In fact, the doctor's obsession with photography as a way to capture moments in time is a way of turning back time to before he made that decision to give away his child and lie to his wife and son.

The theme of how people connect--and don't connect--to those that they love immensely is also seen throughout the novel. One of sweetest scenes, for me, is when the twin brother meets his sister, when they are both young adults, and he is in awe with how innocent and simply loving she is. She is without guile and wears her heart on her sleeve. She is also completely living in the moment, which is something their father and mother could never do after the night of the births. Also, the brother spent so much of his teenage and young adulthood years being angry at the past that he, too, is unable to be present for his own romantic relationship. He is also unable to connect in any real way with is father before the man dies.

I was struck, too, by the obvious differences between how children with special needs are treated today and how they were treated only fifty years ago. When I finished the book, I wanted to reflect, too, on the theme of what it means to love someone, either a spouse or a child. The father had good intentions for protecting his wife and newborn son. He didn't want them to suffer the sadness that he experienced when he lost his sister. However, he also robbed them of experiencing the beautiful joy that the nurse clearly had as she parented the young baby girl into adulthood. Also, in his desire to be a good father to his son, the only child he had left in his life, he drove him away by his detached emotions and unrealistic expectations. Great book


Karen Dydzuhn