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 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 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.