Excerpt from The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"They came and got him this morning," said Jake.

"Oh my God," said Lucy.

"Maybe she'll . . . maybe it's not . . ." sputtered Carole, an English teacher at Chávez Memorial High School, which was located three blocks from Conroe's BBQ.

"Anyone want a flauta?" I said, passing the tray. We didn't mention Mitchell again, and Jake and I left the restaurant without the baby gifts. We were pretty drunk, so Jake called Austin Taxi from the Matt's El Rancho parking lot. On the ride home, I rested my head on my husband's shoulder, watching the bright signs outside the cab window as we crossed the interstate to the Eastside: We Buy Gold Emporium, Churros Aqui!, Top Dawg's Bar and Grill. I told the driver to hang a right after Frank's Coin Laundry, where I brought our clothes every Monday when Conroe's was closed. Two blocks later, Jake said, "Here we are."

2215 Mildred Street—our home. We'd bought it from an elderly black woman who was moving to Pflugerville, joining the exodus of black families from downtown Austin's Eastside to the sprawling suburbs. It was a cottage, really: one thousand square feet of termite-nibbled hardwood. Jake and his father had painted the house a glossy white, added black shutters to the windows, erected a picket fence around the yard. I'd bought two brass lanterns to hang on either side of our hunter-green door. On one of our evening walks around the neighborhood, we'd found a broken porch swing. Jake used his welding equipment and a few cans of Rust-Oleum to restore the swing, hanging it on the front porch. In the backyard, we'd planted a lemon tree and a row of bamboo. We could be poster children for Eastside gentrification, but we were not ashamed. We'd made a home for ourselves on Mildred Street, same as the crazy lady at 2213 and the young family at 2217. Same as Omar Martinez, who lived across the street and worked at Juan in a Million, home of the best hangover breakfast in town.

Our house was dark. As the cab pulled away, Jake sank into the porch swing and I let myself inside. This had been, we'd vowed, the last chance. I was infertile, and our hopes for adoption had about run out. We had borrowed every last dime available to try to impregnate a kind but stoic surrogate in Detroit named Janeen. After Jake and I had flown to Michigan seven times, Janeen said—kindly and with stoicism—that she needed to close this chapter and move on. She was now pregnant with a Brooklyn man's sperm. I knew because I read her blog.

In the decade we'd been trying to have a baby, our life had become a symphony of failure, almost rapturous with dramatic and dashed hopes. Pregnant women contacted us through our adoption agency, but then chose another couple, kept the baby, or (in one case) turned out to be a nut job who'd never been pregnant in the first place. I'd maintained a website advertising our cheery life and happy home (writing corny stories about how we'd met; what our days at Conroe's BBQ were like; and what sports, religion, and hobbies we'd teach our youngster), but though we received emails aplenty, none of the desperate people perusing the site had decided to bless us with a baby.

In the Detroit airport, after Janeen's announcement, Jake told me he was done. In the Fuddruckers restaurant next to Gate C17, he grabbed my hand and begged me to stop. Exhausted and low, I agreed to deactivate our adoption file, to close this chapter, to move on with grace, gratitude, and all that crap. We embraced, ignoring the stares of the other Fuddruckers patrons. I felt, when we were aloft and sailing through the sky toward Austin, that maybe we would be okay. But then Naomi had chosen us, and baby Mitchell had come.

The night before, I'd fed him. Small and dark, with a cap of black curls, Mitchell had opened his brown eyes and looked at me. "I'm your mommy," I said, tasting the precious words. I fit a bottle between his lips and watched him suckle, felt his body ease. As I held him, he passed with a tiny shudder from wakefulness to sleep. The moon outside his window was full. I was full. And then the agency called.

Excerpted from The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward. Copyright © 2015 by Amanda Eyre Ward. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.