It’s 1985, and like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself equally overwhelmed and overjoyed by her newborn son. Struggling to balance the demands of new motherhood, Rebecca leans on Priscilla, the family nanny, who brings much-needed order to the household even as she shakes Rebecca’s perception of the world. As questions of race enter Rebecca’s cloistered life for the first time, she has the opportunity to finally confront the blind spots of her own privilege.Rebecca feels so profoundly connected to the woman who has taught her what it means to be a mother that when Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, it seems strangely natural for Rebecca to step 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 will be a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.With the same warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep.