The White Hot

The story of a runaway mother's ten days of freedom-and the pain, desire, longing, and wonder we find on the messy road to enlightenment-from Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes."The White Hot has the effect of pressing your hand to a barbed live wire. April's is one of the most memorable voices I've encountered in recent fiction. . . . [A] brilliant depiction of a woman learning to transform her rage into something resembling transcendence."-The New York Times Book ReviewLONGLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Oprah Daily, Kirkus Reviews, BookPageApril is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just . . . walk away. She wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. That ticket takes her from her Philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest-an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.The White Hot takes the form of a letter from mother to daughter about a moment of abandonment that would stretch from ten days to ten years-an explanation, but not an apology. Hudes narrates April's story-spiritual and sexy, fierce and funny-with delicate lyricism and tough love. Just as April finds in her painful and absurd sojourn the key to freeing herself and her family from a cage of generational trauma, so Hudes turns April's stumbling pursuit of herself into an unforgettable short epic of self-discovery.