The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

I'd seen this one quite frequently while cataloguing and knew how popular it was from the number of requests our borrowers were placing but I probably wouldn't have read it had Gillian not suggested it. And it was quite enjoyable.

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down syndrome. Knowing the pain of a child with severe medical needs and a reduced life expectancy from his own childhood and wanting Norah , his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself.

So begins this story that unfolds over a quarter of a century in which these two families are bound by David Henrys fateful decision that long-ago winter night.