Excerpt from That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Christopher pressed his dry lips against Rebecca's forehead.

She willed her eyes to focus. Where was the baby? She had seen the white, the void, and she had survived, and now she was impatient, and why wouldn't she be? The fire had forged her into something else entirely (a superhero) and she didn't have time to waste.

"He's perfect." Christopher had a postcoital blush after all that yelling.

Rebecca felt no lighter. There still seemed to be so many people, a dozen maybe, and she was wet with something, absurdly thirsty. She saw the tape deck across the room and knew she had not imagined the music. She saw the baby in someone's hands and knew that she had not imagined the baby. She did not see Dr. Brownmiller. She was alone with these dozen strange women.

One of the nurses approached with the baby. Rebecca reached for him as though she knew how to hold a baby. She did not. She pulled his small body toward hers, which felt larger, now, than it had when he was inside of it. Grotesque, a marvel: like Everest, the Grand Canyon, the sheer majesty of the ocean. I could do it again. I could do anything. The baby wore a hat, which seemed hilarious, and was wrapped tight. His eyes flickered, then settled shut. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to lick him. She wanted him to always be right there in front of her. Her knees hurt like she'd been pedaling a bicycle.

"What a beauty." Christopher patted her arm. "I should get your mom. Your sisters. They're dying to see you."

Rebecca nodded or said nothing, it did not matter. The nurse touched her and the touch felt like a violation. The baby's skin on hers was euphoria, religion, blunt feeling. Anything else was intrusion. The nurse said rest or consult or something but nothing made any sense, and Rebecca stared at the wall or the ceiling, she couldn't tell which, or she fell asleep. It wasn't clear.

From That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam. Copyright 2018 Rumaan Alam. Excerpted with permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.