The Leap Year Gene of Kit McKinley
On February 29, 1916, Katherine (Kit) McKinley is born to Lillian and Thomas in Canada. Thomas has died in WWI, and his brother Ernest comes into their lives during a very unusual pregnancy – far longer than normal. Ernest falls in love with Lillian and Kit; they become a family. Kit’s physical and emotional growth is drawn out – one year for every four – while her intellect develops in calendar years, excelling in music, languages, and running. Ernest and Lillian gradually deduce what is occurring.
In the interwar years, the eugenics movement begins to gain favor, and Ernest and Lillian go to extreme lengths to keep Kit’s condition a secret and avoid unanswerable questions. They regularly create new birth certificates to reflect Kit’s size, do not make long-term friends, and move frequently. Ernest, a diplomat, takes advantage of opportunities to live in France, Germany, India, and America. In time Helen is born, creating a new complication. To outsiders, Kit must become Helen’s younger sister and eventually her daughter. In Germany leading up to WWII, Kit’s life is at risk. The Lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) concept meant euthanasia of morally and genetically inferior people.
We follow Kit and the McKinley family across 100 years until she is 25 years old, delving into several social and scientific topics – sterilization legislation in Canada and America and the Nazi policy of death for “undesirables”; the science of genetics as Lillian pursues research in the field to get answers for Kit’s condition; Lillian’s Alzheimer’s disease; Helen’s husband’s interest in developing new birth control; and more. Suspending disbelief to buy into Kit’s story of growing and maturing only by leap years is problematic. A century of too many topics and characters moving in and out of the McKinley family circle make this novel a miss.
