The White Hot

The potent debut novel from playwright and memoirist Hudes (My Broken Language) follows a single mother who abandons her daughter to try and find herself. The story takes the form of a letter written by April Soto, 26, to her 10-year-old daughter, Noelle, which Noelle is meant to read when she turns 18. The mother and daughter live with April’s mother and grandmother in Philadelphia, and April plans to leave Noelle there for 10 days to clear her head and rid herself of the “white hot,” a seething rage that regularly washes over her, due in part to the burden of childcare and her dead-end job. April spends several days in Pittsburgh before heading back east, determined to confront Noelle’s father, who abandoned her when she was pregnant. Early on, the reader learns that April has been missing from Noelle’s life ever since she left, and Noelle is now reading the letter as she’s about to finish high school. The end of April’s letter is gut-wrenching, but the novel offers profound clarity, particularly in how it traces the roots of April’s anger and restlessness to her grandmother’s migration from Puerto Rico in the 1980s and other generational traumas (“My anger had launched a voyage and voyages were my birthright”). This sizzles. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME. (Nov.)