Excerpt from The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
The White Hot

Noelle received the envelope eight years after her mother's disappearance. She got home from school and found it propped on the counter, oversize and leaning against the microwave door, clearly placed there by her dad or stepmother to catch her eye. She ran a finger over the uppercase letters: NOELLE SOTO. It wasn't the handwriting that dinged memory's bell so much as the pen's feral indentations. No sender was named above the return address but Noelle recognized those grooves like a gut recognizes a fist. The same ones she'd glimpsed on emergency contact forms—"blue cards"—brought into school in Septembers, on grocery lists carried to the corner store. Why did her mom press so hard for the littlest of nothings? Grooves that attacked the paper, letters like jackhammers.

One corner was ripped and a binder clip peeked through. She folded the torn flap and saw a return address in Pittsburgh. Six hours away. Did that mean her mom had been close all this time, or far? "Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh ..." the devil laughed in her ear. "Pitts-burgh ..."

On the back, a note: To my daughter. An explanation. Do not open until your eighteenth birthday.

And so, with rumbling heart and saliva pasting tongue to teeth (fury's alchemy gave her a mouthful of metal), Noelle plunged a finger into the manila corner and ripped open the fabric of her world. Seven weeks left till graduation, till the long-awaited diploma, but no: adulthood began now, with these loosely stacked pages and whatever "explanation" they might offer, or claim to offer, or fail to offer. Noelle devoured her mother's words in three hours, standing by the microwave, before meeting her dad, stepmother, and brothers at the Italian restaurant where her birthday tiramisu would arrive with a glittering lit sparkler plunged into its core.

Dear Noelle, (I am tempted to say dear Noe or dear Nolita),

I am not going to send this. It's an exercise, it should probably say Dear April at the top because it's for me. I've written it a thousand times already, in countless ways—defenses, apologies—the only difference now is I've gotten real paper involved.

Your milestone barrels at me. Wishes push up. They don't care that I've forfeited the right to wish them.

That we splurge on Crayolas and a notepad and head to East River Drive.

That we get lemonades and do your homework on the bench outside Target.

That I give you double Dutch braids, the diagonal ones that take at least four episodes of America's Got Talent.

That a midnight thunderstorm rouses you, we go downstairs, kneel on the sofa like cats, and watch the sky streak, scared together. You scared of the volume, me of your fear.

I know, I know. Unfair desires. Outdated, too. I ping myself each time.

Deeper down, though, a realer wish rumbles, directed at tangible present-tense you, a wish for Noelle Soto on the cusp of womanhood.

That you lick the winds of freedom.

On this, I have some experience. The knowledge cost me everything and I'll be damned if it goes to waste. So, imagine this: We meet up at a café. Maybe it's the Dominican bakery on my corner, where I crammed for my GED and spent a year wrestling Beloved. First, I marvel at your changed appearance, eight years has transformed you. Oh, mija. (May I? What right do I have?) We sit. Place to ourselves. There's just one table by the window, and a lace curtain blurs the sidewalk beyond. A little privacy, but it still requires of us some public civility. Bachata twanging (Romeo Santos?) so I gotta lean in to tell you why I left ... the when and how of it ... Maybe at an angle so close I can't even see your face as I speak, cuz certainly I'd have a change of heart ...

* * *

That awful day began with your classroom art show. Do you remember? Our Family Homes. In a roomful of parents and fourth-graders—some sweeter than you, others more assured—you were a vexing blend of devious and brilliant. During the presentation, you bombed on vocal projection and eye contact, but no one cared because what you captured in pencil, crayon, and Oprah magazine cutout was uncanny for a ten-year-old. It wasn't the first time your smarts were borderline embarrassing.

Excerpted from The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes. Copyright © 2025 by Quiara Alegría Hudes. Excerpted by permission of One World. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.