Friday, November 23, 2018, 3:30 PM.

Every month, residents of Central Baptist Village meet in the Craft Room to discuss a book chosen by our Outreach Librarian. This month we’re reading That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam.

Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself 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.

Priscilla’s presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca’s 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. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby.

Written with warmth and psychological acuity, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.