The Memory Seekers Daughter (2005) by Kim Edwards

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Memory Seekers Daughter (2005) 

by Kim Edwards
Lexington, Kentucky

Kentucky: 9/16

   The Memory Keeper's Daughter is about a physician father who gives up his Down's Syndrome afflicted daughter at birth, asking a trusted nurse to deposit her at a nearby institution (as was often the practice back then).  He tells his young wife that the daughter- the twin of a healthy baby boy, is dead and this lie becomes a sin that the couple can absolutely not surpass.  Of course, I knew on a variety of levels that once this Dad gave away his daughter with Down's Syndrome, everyone would spend the rest of their lives thinking about little else.  The new mother, of course, dedicates her entire life to fighting for this child.  The father is never really able to connect with his son or wife.  The actual mother never, ever, for one single day stops thinking about her dead daughter.  And we are talking 500 pages of this.

  The Doctor's wife, at least, has a little Betty Draperish vibe that entertains.  The Doctor himself is sad. 

As for the woman who raises this child as her own... I myself was the older sibling of a similar brother, someone who was not given away.  I've spent a lot of time living the experience that this woman went through, albeit not as a single mother in 1980's Pittsburgh.  I was interested to see how author Edwards resolve the question that I have (and still have not gotten an answer for):  Of course, it is great that parents devote their entire lives to raising special needs children instead of having them institutionalized.  But what about the fact that all this work is performed under the guide of someday generating an independent human being who can, in fact, exist without 24/7/365 support which is provided by these parents.  My personal experience is that this idea of adult independence for special needs folks is a bit of a sham.

 Of course, The Memory Seekers Daughter ends just when we might expect to see how everything works out, but who can blame the author.  She doesn't have an answer, no one does.