"The Memory Keeper's Daughter" - Kim Edwards

I was given this book a while ago, and finally sat down to read it last weekend. I recently finished it and I loved the book.

It is a book about a choice one man made and the repercussions of that choice.

The book starts out with the man, who is a doctor and his wife, who is about to give birth to twins (although they didn't know it until she was in the delivery room). The first baby born is a little boy, healthy. The second baby is a little girl, born with Down's syndrome. It is 1964. The doctor makes a decision to send the baby away to an asylum to spare his wife the dispair of raising a child with health issues. He instructs the nurse who assisted with the delivery to take the child to the institution. When she gets there, she is appalled by the living conditions, and decides to keep the child for herself. The book follows these 2 seperate lives.

I loved that this book didn't sugar-coat anything. You get to see the downward spiral of the one side, and the progress made on the other. In the end, they reunite. It is a very moving story and one that I relate to on a personal level.

I'm glad I was given this book and I would recommend it to anyone.