ON A SNOWY WINTER’S night in 1964 a doctor is forced to deliver his wife’s baby in his surgery. A beautiful son is born but soon the doctor discovers a twin is on the way. It is a girl who he instantly realises has Down’s Syndrome. In a split second he makes a decision that will haunt him, his wife and son for decades to come. He charges the nurse present to take the baby away to an institution and informs his wife their daughter died. The nurse, unable to leave the girl in the terrible institution disappears and raises her as her own daughter.
Kim Edwards
Kim Edwards is the author of the short story collection The Secrets of a Fire King, which was an alternate for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award, and she has won both the Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she currently teaches writing at the University of Kentucky. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is her debut novel.
