The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

[duchess of malfi]

I was just wondering if anyone else has read this book and what they thought of it?

It starts with a freak spring snow storm in Lexington, Kentucky in 1964. A doctor cannot get through to the hospital on the bad roads, so delivers his own twins at his office with the help of a nurse who was able to get there through the snow.

The first baby, a boy is perfectly healthy. The second baby, a girl, has Down's Syndrome.

The doctor gives the baby girl to the nurse and tells her to take the baby away to a nursing home near Louisville. (Apparently that is what many people did with retarded children at that time). When his wife recovers from the anesthesia, he tells her that the second baby died.

Well, the nurse takes the baby to the home, but it is a terrible place...so she decides to keep the baby for herself and moves out of state.

The story tells what happens to the doctor and his family (especially what the lies to do to him and to his relationships with his wife and son) and also what happens to the nurse and the baby girl she loves and raises as her own.

It is really interesting to compare and contrast the lives of the two twins.