The White Hot

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.

The White Hothas the effect of pressing your hand to a barbed live wire. Aprils is one of the most memorable voices Ive encountered in recent fiction. . . . [A] brilliant depiction of a woman learning to transform her rage into something resembling transcendence.The New York Times Book Review

LONGLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR,Oprah Daily, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage

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 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 questan accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.

The White Hottakes 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 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 Aprils stumbling pursuit of herself into an unforgettable short epic of self-discovery.

Quiara Alegra Hudesis the Pulitzer Prizewinning 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.

• Publisher: One World
• Publish Date: November 11, 2025
• Pages: 176
• Language: English
• Type: Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9780593732335
• Dimensions: 8.5 X 5.7 X 0.8 inches | 0.7 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Popular Fiction, Literary Fiction