The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

A Novel

Kim Edwards

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Themes
Family secrets, Parent-child separation, Love and family bonds

Who it’s for

  • Readers interested in family dramas shaped by long-buried secrets
  • Readers drawn to stories of parent-child separation and family bonds

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How strongly BookFrontier reads the book as belonging to each subject.

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About this book

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.

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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.

Publisher details

Publisher categories

  • Literary Fiction
  • Women's Fiction
  • Family Life
Authors
Kim Edwards
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Published
May 30, 2006
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Literary Fiction