This beautifully written but flawed inaugural novel by Kim Edwards portrays an initially loving couple whose relationship is irretrievably damaged and then slowly disintegrates over the course of 25 years after the husband, a doctor, delivers his own son and daughter and then later claims to his wife that one of their children had been stillborn when in fact the daughter was alive at birth, but disfigured by the effects of Down's Syndrome. 

The old aphorism, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive" says it all when Dr. David Henry, a Lexington, Kentucky surgeon, has to tend to his own wife, Norah, when she goes into labor during a blinding snowstorm because the other doctor wasn't able to get to the hospital. A perfectly normal son is born, and then Dr. Henry is shocked to see the start of a second birth minutes later. Twins. However, his surprise turns to horror when the baby girl shows the classic signs of Down's Syndrome, a dreaded disease which runs in his family and had killed his beloved sister years before. 

Wanting to protect his wife and not considering the consequences, Dr. Henry passes the baby girl on to his attending nurse and instructs her to deliver the infant to a home for Down's patients. This was back in 1964 when our understanding of these health issues wasn't nearly what it is today. After his wife comes to and is informed that she had given birth to twins, Dr. Henry lies to her by telling her that her son, Paul, is fine, but her daughter, who would have been named Phoebe, had been stillborn. After this first lie, Dr. Henry has only one more chance to redeem himself and admit to it before the die is cast and the family moves on. 

While this sounds rather heart-wrenching, it is still an interesting premise which had aroused my curiosity because at its heart it is also a mystery which demands resolution. You know that Norah Henry is going to find out, but how and when and under what circumstances? 

A recent favorable review of Kim Edwards' second novel, "The Lake of Dreams" referred to this novel as having been a New York Times best seller. Reading this, I resolved to read this novel first to see how her writing career had started. After all, how or why does anyone's first novel become a national best seller? 

I like to read books by authors in their chronological order. When I read a later novel by a newly discovered author which really impresses me, I will invariably go back and read their first novel, a process which has two distinct advantages. The first and most important advantage is that I can then observe the author's professional growth as a writer. In theory, but not always in practice, the later novels should show a fine tuning of their craft according to the old adage that "practice makes perfect." Secondly, many authors write novels with reoccurring characters who progress over time, and it is always pleasing to follow this progression if I enjoy the literary characters which they have created.

To give credit where credit is due, Kim Edwards is an accomplished writer who pens wonderfully descriptive passages and has a sensitivity and a descriptive feel for portraying the areas and the people in her books. There is an easy-going flow and a lilt to her passages which makes reading them a pleasure. If only this were all that was needed for a great novel. 

While her content is wonderful, the underlying structure of her novel is very disappointing. To delve into this I have to explain one of my biases, which is that I do not happen to care for what I call "slice of life" stories, which may have dramatic occurrences, but they lack a dramatic structure. They don't go anywhere other than pass through time, which is what we mortals all do. I greatly prefer the novels I read to have a dramatic arc, and slice of life stories, which includes biographies, are generally flat line in drama with only a few bumps along the way, since time not the plot is the guiding force. When all is said and done, this novel is little more than a fictional biography. 

The setup for a dramatic arc is certainly here, but, unfortunately, nothing comes of this tragedy, and life goes on with each of the participants coping as best they can, which is to say, not very well at all in some instances. More disappointing still is that when dramatic events do occur, nothing comes of them. The author invariably jumps the story to years in the future, and then the dramatic occurrences are referred to in retrospect, which is certainly a very cool way to examine a situation. 

Another problem that I have with this novel is that on occasion one of the characters does something entirely unexpected and not at all what I would have guessed them to be capable of doing. I like my characters to behave in somewhat of a logical manner. For example, not to give away the story, but late in the novel when David Henry accedes to his son's greatest desire, the son then flies off the handle and does something so incredibly foolish that I was left dumbfounded. It was as if he wanted to sabotage the dream that he has had all of his life. I didn't get it, and it was very annoying to read this. It just made no sense at all. There are other examples of inexplicable behavior as well.

Kim Edwards wrote the short story collection, "The Secrets of a Fire King" (1997), which was an alternate for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award, and she has won both a Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award. A graduate of Colgate University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she currently teaches writing at the University of Kentucky. Her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Zoetrope, Anteaus, Story, and The Paris Review and have received a National Magazine Awards for excellence in Fiction and a Pushcart Prize. This is her first novel, which has been chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover title. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and daughters. 2005, Penguin Books, 432 pages.