Linda S. (Ladyslott) reviewed on 11/7/2007 + 113 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

During a snowstorm in 1964, Norah Henry goes into labor. Unable to reach the hospital, Norah's husband meets his nurse at his orthopedic practice, and delivers his healthy son Paul into the world. A few minutes later a second child is born, a girl with Down's syndrome. David Henry makes a split second decision, one that will haunt him all his life. He tells his nurse to take the child to an institution nearby. He then waits for his wife to awaken from the anesthesia, and tells her the child has died and been taken away for burial. Unbeknownst to David however, the nurse Caroline takes does not leave the baby at the institution. Carefully planning her disappearance, she leaves town and raises the child as her own.

A multi-layered look at the destruction lies and deception can take on a family, even when the lie is told with the best intentions. Following the lives of the two families, the Henry family, slowly being destroyed by a lie that only one of them knows, and Caroline's struggles as a single mother raising a special needs child, Edwards adroitly weaves the two separate tales until the convergence of the story lines near the end of the book. Well written, if repetitive at times, I couldn't stop reading until I found out what the end of the story would bring.

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