

But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. 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. Priscilla’s presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca’s perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the 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 help-Priscilla Johnson-and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny.


From the celebrated author of Rich and Pretty, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep
