The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: Chapter 1: March 1964 Summary & Analysis

A light snow begins to fall in Lexington, Kentucky. David Henry builds a fire after eating dinner with his pregnant wife, Norah, who is due to have their first child in three weeks. The two of them have only been married for a year. While David puts logs in the fireplace, Norah muses aloud about “what it’s like […] before we’re born,” and what their baby might be experiencing at this moment. David admits he doesn’t know—Norah points out that, as a doctor, he ought to. David tells her that he’s just an orthopedic surgeon, and doesn’t know much beyond his field.

Norah is eleven years younger than the thirty-three year-old David, who has recently moved to Lexington. Shortly after arriving, he spotted Norah in a department store, and was so bewitched by her beauty that he followed her upstairs—into the lingerie department. He came up with a flimsy excuse for being in the department, claiming to be buying a robe for his sister when in reality his sister June had been dead for years, and he had no “living family that he acknowledged.” After securing Norah’s phone number, he purchased the robe and left. Several days later he called her and took her out to dinner—three months later, they were wed.

At eleven, Norah goes to bed, and David stays up reading medical journals for over an hour. When he goes up to bed, he finds Norah on the edge of the bed and in visible pain. She says she believes she is in labor, and as her contractions worsen, David agrees that the baby must be coming early. David summons his medical training to remain calm as he helps Norah pack for the hospital, guides her to the car, and begins driving through the heavy snow. As they make their way through the worsening storm, David reassures Norah that he has called her obstetrician, Dr. Bentley, and the man will meet them at the clinic where the two men practice medicine.

When Norah and David arrive, they enter to find that no one is there but one of the nurses, Caroline, who gives David the news that Dr. Bentley is stuck in the snow and won’t be arriving. David knows that Caroline has a crush on him, and he once even caught her watching him while he napped with his head down at his desk. Caroline is the best nurse at the clinic, though, and David is glad she is there to help him—he realizes he will have to deliver the baby himself.

Caroline helps Norah up onto the table while David cleans up and puts on a lab coat. When he examines Norah, he realizes that she is ready to deliver. Norah says that she wants the baby to be called Phoebe if it’s a girl, and Paul if it’s a boy. Caroline gives Norah some gas while David help Norah to push—David has delivered babies before, back in medical school, and he calmly but mechanically guides Norah through labor until a baby boy is born. Caroline takes the baby away to clean him up, and David assures Norah that their son is “perfect.” Norah begins having another contraction, and David prepares to help her deliver her afterbirth—but as she cries out, he realizes that she must be having twins, and another baby is on the way.

To help with the pain, David urges Caroline to give Norah some more gas. David urges himself to remain calm as he coaches a woozy Norah through more pushing. After several minutes, a baby girl is born—but when David looks upon her face, he sees that her eyelids are marked by epicanthal folds and her nose is flattened—“a mongoloid,” David thinks, frightened. He remembers his own sister, June, who was born with a heart defect and grew slowly and unsteadily before dying at just twelve years old. As David reflects on his mother’s grief, and his own, he remembers that children with Down syndrome often have congenital heart defects, and knows what he must do.

David begins cleaning the baby girl up, cutting her umbilical cord and checking her heart and lungs. He does not realize that this quiet night, with snow falling silently outside, will become “the turning point of his life.” David gives this baby to Caroline and instructs her to keep her in the other room for now—he doesn’t want Norah to “know” the truth about her. Caroline takes the girl into the next room while David delivers the half-conscious Norah’s placentas and then stitches her up.

While Norah rests, David goes into the other room and writes a name and address on a piece of paper. He instructs Caroline to take the baby girl away to a “place” where she can grow up. Caroline is horrified, but David tells her that there is a high chance Phoebe will have a fatal heart defect—he is, he says, “trying to spare [them] all a terrible grief.” Caroline realizes how deep David’s conviction is and unhappily agrees to do what he has asked of her.

Early the next morning, Caroline puts Phoebe into a shallow box lined with blankets and takes her out to her car. She drives away into the snow as David watches her go. He returns back inside, where the sleeping Norah has awakened to nurse Paul. She doesn’t seem to remember the end of her labor, and David calmly, sadly tells her that, although she delivered a second baby, the little girl “died as she was born.”