Works by
Kim Edwards
(Writer)

The Secrets of a Fire King: Stories (1997)
The characters in these stories are often separated from the mainstream - a juggler and a trapeze artist, a daughter whose mother is a public evangelist waging a wear against sin, a cleaning woman whose life is inexplicably tied to Marie Curie's. The stories they inhabit transcend the barriers of time to explore the universally driving force of our experience: the magnitude of human love. In "Spring, Mountain, Sea" a young American brings his Korean bride home after serving in the war, and finds himself isolated from both his own culture and the culture of his new family. In "Gold" a Malaysian rubber tapper becomes obsessed with the possibility of becoming as wealthy as the foreign landowners who visit his village, and in his quest for gold nearly destroys the enduring relationships that have shaped his life. In the title story, the narrator - a fire-eater in a circus - shows a careless disregard for a boy who comes to learn his trade and as a consequence brings about his own downfall. Taking us to exotic and remote places in America, Europe, and Asia, The Secrets of a Fire King is at once magical and profound, marking the extraordinary debut of a new voice in American fiction.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2005)
Award-winning writer Kim Edwards’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted family drama that explores every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you?

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’s syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect 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 beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by David Henry’s fateful decision that long-ago winter night.

A rich and deeply moving page-turner, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter captures the way life takes unexpected turns and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets burst into the open. It is an astonishing tale of redemptive love.