"the memory keepers daughter"

I've been working a lot more lately, so i didn't get this book review done last week as i hoped. ironically i was working with special needs students at our high school. i'm a substitute teacher so i'm never sure from day to day where i will be working. i was nervous about this particular assignment, almost canceled. but i really enjoyed it. The kids are eager to learn, and to make the best of their abilities. I was reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards.

description from the back of the book:

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964. When a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immedialtly recognizes that his daughter had Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution.Instead she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own.

Another teacher who saw me reading this, said that she got so mad at the husband after the first chapter that she couldn't finish the book. I like a book that makes me feel something, gets my heart involved with the story.In the 60's institutionalizing a disabled child wouldn't have been uncommon.The book brings up 2 questions, first how diffrent would their life would have been, if there had not been a twin. and 2nd what is the value of that twins life?

I don't really think their life would have been that diffrent if there had only been one child born. The emotional distance is more a symptom of his character, than a reaction to his choice. He had such a desire for perfection, that he could send an imperfect child away, without discussing it with his wife, before his wife had even seen her. Everyone has stuggles in life. if it hadn't been this, than something else would have happened to ruin his 'perfect' life. Whether it was an illness, or the loss of a job, he would react the same way, distancing himself from the problem and whom ever he saw as the cause of it.

In my own life, i have found that when a crisis hits, a strong relationship will stand firm, and a weak on will crumble. It brings out what is already there. We tried to have children for 5 years before becoming pregnant with our triplets. I never would have planned it that way, but those were valuable years in our marriage. We learned to trust each other, and to make decisions together. We couldn't have predicted that we would have 3 babies at once, or that later when i was pregnant with our son, i would be diagnosed with cancer. But what we had already built, would carry us through those times.