The Memory Keeper’s Daughter Themes

At the heart of the story of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter lies a terrible secret: Dr. David Henry’s choice to send away his daughter Phoebe, born with Down syndrome, while telling his wife Norah that the baby was stillborn. This lie—meant to save Norah, David himself, and their “normal” son Paul, Phoebe’s fraternal twin, from a life of difficulty—ultimately casts a shadow of secrecy, pain, and estrangement over the Henry family, and…

As the secrets and lies within the Henry family deepen, David, Norah, and Paul find themselves retreating more and more often into memory and the past—for different reasons, but all with the same desperate energy. David takes up photography as a way of slowing down and inhabiting moments, in a retroactive effort to understand his own past decisions, while Norah combs through memories of her early courtship with David and their happy first…

When Phoebe Henry is sent away for no reason other than her difference, Caroline Gill—the nurse who helped deliver the child—is unable to leave her at the dirty, understaffed home Dr. David Henry has sent her to, and instead adopts Phoebe as her own daughter. Throughout the novel, as Caroline and Phoebe make a new life together in Pittsburgh while the Henrys remains in Lexington—with Norah and Paul unaware that their family is incomplete—Kim…