That Kind of Mother

NAMED AMOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2018 BYBuzzfeed The Boston Globe The Millions InStyle Southern Living Vogue PopsugarWith his unerring eye for nuance and unsparing sense of irony, Rumaan Alams second novel is both heartfelt and thought-provoking.Celeste Ng, author ofLittle Fires EverywhereFrom the celebrated author ofRich and Pretty, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keepLike many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed.Struggling to jugglethe demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real helpPriscilla Johnsonand begs her to come home with them as her sons nanny.Priscillas presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebeccas perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.