This month's
BOOK TO READ...
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
On one snowy night David Henry makes a choice that will irrevocably change his life and the lives of those closest to him. As a doctor, David is put into a position where he has to deliver his own child. The story uses the third person view to give the perspective of several characters. The story begins in 1964 when a snowstorm hits southern Kentucky. David’s wife, Norah, goes into labor. The two set out for the hospital only to find the roads are all but impassable. They detour to David’s clinic. The delivering physician, who was to meet him there ends up in a car wreck leaving David and his nurse, Caroline, to deliver the baby on their own. At first all seems to go well and Norah delivers a healthy baby boy. It soon becomes apparent that not all is as it seems and that there are going to be complications. Anticipating problems David ask Caroline to sedate Norah while he deals with the complications and delivers what he assumes will be the afterbirth. Whatever problems that he may have anticipated pale in comparison to what actually happens. Norah delivers a second baby.
This is the point in the novel at which the lives of all of those present at the delivery become linked and yet at the same time remain separate. The second child is a girl and she has Down’s syndrome. In 1964 the world is a very different place. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was just being signed into law and it will be another ten years before any federal legislation governing the education of children with disabilities will be passed. Influenced by the societal views of the times and medical protocols, David makes the decision to give their daughter, Phoebe, away and ask Caroline to take her to live in an institution. Norah is told that Phoebe died at birth and has no knowledge of what David has done. Caroline, chooses to keep Phoebe and raise her as her own child.
David makes his choice in a misguided attempt to protect his wife. From this point on in the story, the author follows the lives of both families. David’s monumental decision to give his child away simultaneously ties the two families together while tearing the relationships between himself, Norah and their son, Paul, apart.
As the novel begins at a time that is forty years in the past, it provides the reader with insight as to how children with Down’s syndrome were treated and how hard it was to gain basic rights for them. This novel is crafted in such a way that it pulls out every emotion joy, grief, love and redemption. It leaves the reader guessing up until the end.
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