November 15 2019

The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2005)
By Kim Edwards

Novelist Kim Edwards relates how her pastor shared an account of a man who'd discovered, late in life, that his brother had been born with Down's Syndrome, placed in an institution at birth, and kept a secret from his family, even from his own mother, all his life.  He'd died in the institution, unknown.  Edwards considered how this could happen and has crafted a compelling novel.

Her description of the story follows:

"It is 1964 in Lexington, KY and a rare and sudden winter storm has blanketed the area with snow.  The roads are dangerous, yet Dr David Henry is determined to get his wife Norah to the hospital in time to deliver their first child.  But...the roads are treacherous and he stops at his medical clinic instead.  There, with help from his nurse Caroline, he safely delivers their son Paul.  But unexpectedly, Norah delivers a second child, a girl, in which David immediately recognizes the signs of Down's Syndrome.

"David is a decent but secretive man - he has shared his difficult past with no one, not even is wife - about growing up in a poor, uneducated family and the death of a beloved sister whose heart defect claimed her at the age of 12.  The painful memories of the past and the difficult circumstances of the present intersect to create a crisis, one his which his overriding concern is to spare his beloved Norah what he sees as a life of grief.  He hands the baby girl over to Caroline, along with the address of a home to which he wants her taken, not imagining beyond the moment, or anticipating that his actions will serve to destroy the very things he wishes to protect.  Then he turns to Norah, telling her 'our little daughter died as she was born.'

"From that moment forward, two families begin their new, and separate, lives.  Caroline takes Phoebe to the institution but cannot bear to leave her there.  Thirty-one, unmarried, and secretly in love with David, Caroline has always been a dreamer, waiting for real life to begin.  Now when she makes her own split-second decision to keep and raise Phoebe aa her own, she feels as if it finally has.

"As Paul grows to adulthood, Norah and David grow more and more distant.  Norah, always haunted by the daughter she lost, takes a job that becomes all consuming and seeks the intimacy that eludes her with David through a series of affairs.  Feeling as if he's a disappointment to his father, Paul is angry and finds his only release through music.  David, tormented by his secret, looks for solace through the lens of his camera, the 'Memory Keeper', trying to make sense of life through the images he captures."

Sometimes we make sudden decisions that affect the rest of our lives.  That was the case when Paul handed over his baby daughter.