Fiction – Literary – Women – Hispanic & Latino

RELEASE DATE: 11/11/2025 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER’S WAREHOUSE)

The story of a runaway mothers ten days of freedomand the pain, desire, longing, and wonder we find on the messy road to enlightenmentfrom Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegra Hudes.

April 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 callsthe white hot, a voice inside her tells her to justwalk 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 questan 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 yearsan explanation,but not an apology. Hudes narrates Aprils storyspiritual and sexy, fierce and funnywith delicate lyricismand 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 Aprils stumbling pursuit of herself into an unforgettable short epic of self-discovery.

AUTHOR BIO:

Quiara Alegra Hudesis the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright ofWater by the Spoonfuland the musicalIn the Heights,which won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and which she adapted for the screen. Her memoir,My Broken Language,was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal. Her essays have appeared inThe New York Times, The Washington Post, The Cut, The Nation,andAmerican Theater Magazine. She is co-founder with her cousin Sean of the prison writing program Emancipated Stories.

“April Soto has fled her life but has left usThe White Hot–at once a reclaiming, a credo, and a heartrending letter to a beloved daughter from an unforgettable mother. In wise, searing prose, Quiara Alegra Hudes fills in a daughter’s lost history while treating us to a stunning debut about the passions that whisper: to honor what you love, leave.The White Hotarticulates our beautiful, unspeakable wildernesses. . . . Dignified, sexy, and true, with lines (‘A mother is a life sentence’; ‘How could love look like leaving?’) burned indelibly into my heart.”–Marie-Helene Bertino, author ofBeautyland

“I readThe White Hotin one sitting. Ruthless, visceral, immersive, uncompromising, and relentless, this is one of the most heartwrenching literary rides you will ever take in your life, the kind of book you will immediately want to buy for all the mothers and daughters in your life. It’s an extraordinary debut!”–Angie Cruz, author ofDominicana

“Bold and utterly original,The White Hotis a literary family thriller that reckons with the price we–and those we leave behind–must pay for our freedom. It is primordial scream meets brilliant argument, and it will forever change what you think is possible for art to achieve.”–Jennifer Croft, author ofThe Extinction of Irena Rey