With The White Hot, Quiara Alegría Hudes (My Broken Language; Pulitzer Prize-winner for the play Water by the Spoonful) offers an expansive, surprising coming-of-age story about both a mother and a daughter. The novel opens on Noelle's 18th birthday, when she receives an envelope. Since she was 10, when her mother disappeared, Noelle has lived with her father, stepmother, and two half-brothers in New Jersey. Readers have just met the teenager when the voice shifts. "Dear Noelle... I am not going to send this," the letter begins. What at first masquerades as an interlude quickly takes over the book. Breathlessly, alongside Noelle, readers take in April Soto's story.
At age 26, April is weary. Her 10-year-old daughter is precocious, an artistic and academic genius, and disturbingly observant of her mother's shortcomings. Their household comprises four generations of Soto women. April is undone by her child's gimlet eye, her own unrealized potential, her lack of options, and daily drudgery, and in the wake of a scene at the dinner table, she simply walks away from their Philadelphia home.
What follows is an epic and astonishing journey of self-discovery. April tells her child she knows her leaving was a betrayal, but hopes she has also offered choice. April's narrative is astounding and vibrant. In her best and worst moments, she describes being cracked open, experiencing epiphanies: "She felt an un-looming, a separation into threads, some of which rose and drifted through nearby windows whose unseen inhabitants shimmered inside her, too." These, as well as the mundane, yield stunning, lightning-bolt prose. The White Hot is wide-ranging, thought-provoking, tender, and raw--unforgettable. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia