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A vibrant novel that portrays the lives of an American woman fleeing the trauma of childhood abuse and an Iraqi refugee fleeing the trauma of war, each in the midst of childbirth, that Joyce Carol Oates praises as “breathtaking, heartrending, and finally uplifting” and Richard Ford declares “involved me so thoroughly that I began to anticipate how it would end.”
Lorraine and Will, New Yorkers married for 15 years, are having their first baby, via IVF. They are 40, successful in their careers—finance and music—with pasts that have held each of them back from one another until the day While We Were Waiting unfolds: the day in the middle of Lorraine’s sixth month when she is rushed to the high-risk obstetrics unit of Met U Hospital. Over thenext hours Lorraine and Will, individually, are compelled to face themselves and their pasts in ways they’d never thought possible: Will struggling with the loss of a beloved mentor who perished with the World Trade Center; Lorraine, a musical prodigy dealing with the ongoing aftermath of betrayal and abuse.
Sharing the waiting room with Will is Clement, an Iraqi archeologist newly arrived in America, having fled with his family from ISIS. He, too, struggles with trauma – from a murderous terrorist attack, from the high-risk delivery that his wife is enduring, and from a long-ago guilt that makes him fear for his laboring wife and their unborn child. As the space shared by Will and Clement expands with every hour and revelation. Lorraine’s labor compels her to let go of the grievous harm done to her in her youth, making While We Were Waiting a story about the imaginative power of acceptance and love.
"What a very confident and stirring novel this is. It passes my most difficult test: it involves me so thoroughly that I began to anticipate how it would end, given its preoccupations. And gloriously, it surprised me and proved me—amazingly —to be underappreciating the author's immense discretion and resourcefulness. It's a novel that thoroughly works and illuminates life." —Richard Ford
“A vividly realized, dazzlingly intimate novel of intertwined lives and pasts, set in the most suspenseful of places—the intensive care maternity ward of a New York hospital. Katherine Hughes has written a breathtaking, heartrending, and finally uplifting novel—a mesmerizing reading experience.”—Joyce Carol Oates, author of Fox
"Kate Hughes has brilliantly set her novel in the high-risk labor and delivery ward of a New York hospital. Her characters are survivors of trauma who have chosen to give birth to new life. The suspense built in by the complications of the pregnancies is matched by the stories that unfold while we are waiting. With its vibrant characters and pitch-perfect dialogue, the novel is hard to put down. In the end, we discover that the highest risk is to love in the aftermath of loss and violation."—Carol Gilligan, author of The Deepening Darkness
"Hughes keeps the tension high. . . .Urgent . . . this novel reminds readers that even when life is at its worst, people can choose hope."—Kirkus Reviews