The White Hot

"Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that a novel by the lyricist and playwright known for writing the book for the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights would be stunning. But this slim, powerful debut shook me nonetheless. April Soto was barely holding it together, containing the white-hot rage that had plagued her since childhood, when she learned that daughter Noelle might face the same struggle. With prose that reads like poetry and unflinching honesty, the novel mostly takes the form of April’s letter to Noelle explaining why she ran and stayed away for so long. Contemplating whether the best thing she could do for her child was, in truth, to vanish from her life, she thought: “But how, God? How can love look like leaving? And tell me, will I ungunk the gutters of my bad, bad soul?”"