Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Amazon Remainders Account
Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: June 23, 2005
Publishing house: Amazon Remainders Account
Sale Popularity Level: 77683
Studio: Amazon Remainders Account
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Product Description:
On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. 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 to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret.
But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. 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 long-ago winter night.
A brilliantly crafted, stunning debut, The Memory Keeper's Daughter explores the way life takes unexpected turns, and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets burst into the open.
Performed by Martha Plimpton
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Rated by buyers 
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Sometimes the choices we make in the name of protecting someone we love can cause the object of our love more harm than good. So it is with Dr. David Henry.
When twins, a boy and a girl, are born to his wife, and the girl has Downs Syndrome, he decides it would be better for his wife to think the child died at birth. He puts the infant in the hands of his nurse to take to an institution. Instead, she keeps the girl and the child becomes a blessing to her and her husband. In the doctor's family, the wife cannot come to terms with her loss and her husband cannot forget the child he abandoned and both contribute to the breakdown of their marriage. The Memory Keeper's Daughter is an excellent story of both heartbreak and happiness and the validation of Downs Syndrome children as loving, happy individuals and, although they may need extra care, they can be as much a blessing to a family as any child.
Eunice Boeve, author of Ride a Shadowed Trail
Rated by buyers 
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I had high hopes for this book and was disappointed from the beginning. Although descriptive, it failed to evoke emotion. I found myself wanting to be finished with the book. I love books of all types, but I want them to entertain me. This one didn't.
Rated by buyers -
I found the story to be beautiful and sad, but fell short of depressing. Instead, I was fascinated as Edwards deftly explored so many themes. She accurately, yet with a graceful subtely, reflected the epochal decades the characters pass through in the book. The disappointment for couples of finding it so difficult to remain in love, or even simply to communicate, after marriage. The long stretches of emotionally numbing day-to-day life in a marriage. The very real and little undstood depression mothers often experience when their children are very young, when they are beautiful yet so emotionally and physically draining. The challange to so many people who, like David, left poor, rural communities post WWII, getting an education, yet still feeling a keen sense of inadequacy or embarrassment about their origins. The transition afoot in the 60s and 70s, and the disorientation often involved for both wives and husbands, in finding, feeling that it was not necessarily a given that women must stay at home rearing children. How do couples maintain their individuality within a relationship, without erecting walls between them that can't be crossed. The stunning dislocation for parents of trying to cope with volatile teenage children, and often not surviving unscathed.
Hence, the story treats so much more than the effect of guilt over the dark secret of the twin sister. The delicate personal and societal issues of dealing with handicapped persons are, like the other themes, handled tenderly and openly, yet without being forced on the reader. Nevertheless, much of what Edwards describes could happen in any relationship, to any couple trying to master the complexities of making marriage and family work, particularly in that era. It's almost as if the secret of Phoebe's existence serves to accentuate, accelerate and heighten the tensions that would have have existed, in any event, in the lives of Norah and David. This secret gives what might otherwise be mundane themes an added edge and poignancy, a reason to be written about.
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Rated by buyers 
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This is a beautifully written, thought-provoking book that explores love, lies, and the spiritual poverty that stems from shame. I loved every page.
Rated by buyers -
Normally I eschew the "IT" novels - usually they bore me with their lack of imagination and are two dimensional and written for the "beach book" type of readers. I had no intention of reading this book but it seemed to creep up everywhere - on the front tables at Barnes & Nobles and Borders, to every thrift store I found - so I finally gave in to read it.
It wasn't as horribly romance-novel like as I expected but it didn't turn me on my head with the wonders of its use of language. It was fine for what it was and somewhat sweet. It was, however, incredibly predictable. It was obvious that the wife would feel lost, the husband would grow distant and the son would feel the stress of that kind of home. Would anyone find out that the daughter was brought up by the nurse? Would everyone bond together in the end? Sure, we all knew it was coming.
For a very first novel, it was adequate. Some of the phrases were well turned but it did feel a bit like mind candy - nothing to provoke a lot of thought, no characterizations that weren't twinged with stereotype. The depth I was hoping for never arrived.
Would I recommend it? Sure, if you just want something of fluff to keep you occupied for a while. But as great literature, no.
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