This is not just a woman's book, and it is certainly not one that explores only the woman's side of a plot that affects an entire family. It is, rather, a book that encompasses all the hurt and misunderstandings and even the joys that result from one person's unilateral decision. In it I found no villain, and no hero, just human beings struggling to live out their lives that had been forever affected by a secret act intended to save them, not destroy them. When Dr. David Henry, who is a bone doctor, not an obstetrician, is forced to deliver his wife's twins, he knows immediately that one, the girl, will not live a normal life. Ironically, it develops that this girl is the only one in the family who seems to escape the affects of his decision to ask his nurse to take her to an institution. When the nurse makes her decision to keep and raise the child herself, she sets into motion a situation that drastically changes the life course of everyone touched by the Doctor's decision. He wanted to spare his wife and son the sorrow and burden of the Down's Syndrome baby, and the nurse wanted to save the baby from the horrors of an institutionalized life. They both meant well, as most people do when they make life-changing decisions for someone else.

This gripping story shines with characters who are flesh and bone; who live with a feeing of abandonment and betrayal that they can only sense, not understand. They experience a loss of something they never knew, and that unidentified loss creates an aura of mistrust, changed behavior, and alienation that eventually destroys the family unit, but not the family members themselves. They are all, in the end, redeemed by the uncloaking of the secret many years after its fateful beginning, and their redemption is brought about by the lost girl, herself.

In my family, I am "the memory keeper", and I read this lovely, beautifully crafted book with the knowledge of my own family's secrets, some eventually revealed and others not, and I can see how those secrets, any secrets, change lives. The words "What if –" and "If only---" and "I never could understand why----" are familiar to us all, when we think about our families.

Long-standing secrets are indeed burdens, but the good thing about them is that once revealed, they are secrets no more, and the burden is lifted. This book shines a brilliant light on the fact that somewhere, sometime, perhaps in a misguided belief that it was the "right thing to do", someone in everyone's family may have made a decision that affected a long line of people for years to come. Perhaps forever.

This book belongs to everyone. I highly recommend it, and I look forward to the next Kim Edwards novel.
Review by Litera Scripta