The Memory Keeper’s Daughter features a life-altering secret that spans two decades and changes the lives of all the characters. Norah and David Henry are happily married with a baby on the way. However, on the stormy night that Norah gives birth to unexpected twins, David realizes that their daughter has Down Syndrome. As his wife passes out from labor pain, David, a doctor who had delivered their children due to the lack of medical staff, makes the split-second decision to tell his wife that their daughter died and hands the child off to Nurse Caroline Gill and instructs her to drop the child off at an institution. But, as Caroline sees the terrible treatment of children at the institution, she moves away and takes her newfound daughter, Phoebe, as her own. As David and Caroline live separate lives, the secret they both keep threatens to tangle and intertwine their paths- for better or for worse.
I just know I cried like five times while reading this book. It was so good, and I adored the plot and writing style. I know some may say that it was way too slow for them, but I think I found a newfound love for slow but very well-developed plots. The novel borders on the complexity of human relationships and how one decision can change numerous lives all at once. The novel was just absolutely beautiful, and I couldn’t put it down. I’m pretty sure it brought me out of a reading slump (but then another book put me back into it- I’ll write another review about that soon). I think the main thing that I liked about this novel was that it didn’t necessarily have a “good” ending but was instead bittersweet, representing that not all endings are delivered with absolute justice. Nevertheless, I felt as if the ending tied the whole plot together and was incredibly realistic for what people signed up for when they decided to read the novel, but I also know that others wanted more from the ending. Ultimately, this is definitely a book that I will be recommending to others.