
Kim Edwards' stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother's silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you?
In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and to keep her birth a secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is an astonishing tale of redemptive love.
©2005 Kim Edwards; (P)2006 HarperCollins Publishers
"Edwards tells a moving story." (Booklist)
"Edwards is a born novelist....Rich with psychological detail and the nuances of human connection." (Chicago Tribune)
"Anyone would be struck by the extraordinary power and sympathy of The Memory Keeper's Daughter." (The Washington Post)
Few audiobooks cry out for abridgment as much as this one. The premise of Edwards's second novel is loaded with possibilities--a woman gives birth to twins, one of whom has Down's syndrome. The doctor, her husband, makes a quick decision--give the child away and say it was born dead. But Edwards's focus on the minutiae of everyday life from this point on is repetitive at best, pontificating at worst. Narrator Ilyana Kadushin does her best to help listeners see these characters' quirks--altering her tone to convey sympathy, fear, frustration, and the potent conflict between child and parent. Still, their stereotypical aspects are what stand out. Only the disabled Phoebe comes through distinctly. (c) AudioFile 2007
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