Throat on Fire

From the internationally acclaimed author of Discontent, an exuberant, bighearted novel set at the dawn of the new millennium, following a young woman who, in the wake of her mother's desertion, discovers she can perform miracles

In their tight-knit community outside of València, Blanca's mother is an outcast. She’s sharp-witted and provocative, she comes and goes as she pleases, and she has a contentious relationship with the other mothers at her daughter's school. Before long, amid growing tensions, she packs her bags and vanishes. “A vacation,” Blanca’s father tells her, but it soon becomes clear her mother will never return. Three months later, Blanca performs her first miracle: causing the death of a classmate.

Burdened with guilt, Blanca withdraws from others, turning instead to the new technology of the day: the untamed, intoxicating world of the internet. Here, she finds emotionally charged friendships, a brash new persona, and a way of intellectualizing her despair--but also becomes increasingly vulnerable to betrayal and heartbreak. For years, Blanca tenuously keeps these two worlds apart. But on the day she turns eighteen, she receives a mysterious envelope containing her mother’s diaries. Within their pages are long-buried secrets about their community, her marriage, and that lay bare the events that led to her mother’s descent and disappearance. Galvanized by these shocking revelations and the newfound freedom of adulthood, Blanca and her internet friends decide to use her powers to fund a trip to find her mother. But as the journey moves from screens to the real world and Blanca’s influence grows, she begins to grasp the terrifying extent of her own agency.

An odyssey inhabited by absent parents, unexpected heroes, nuns, technophobes, and hippies, Throat on Fire is an exquisite, rapturous exploration of female agency and the torture and exultation of girlhood.