What Grows From Heat

Nia Brooks is twelve years old the first time she sits between her mother's knees and listens to the hot comb talk. In a kitchen on the South Side of Chicago, surrounded by the smell of Blue Magic and the sound of women trading survival wisdom over speakerphone, she begins learning the rules: always have a job, never need a man more than he needs you, and don't be the girl they talk about between hot-comb strokes on a Saturday morning.But Nia is watching. Cataloging. Seeing things before they happen.Raised by a mother who believes safety is a badge and a pension, and a father whose brilliance is matched only by his inability to stay, Nia grows up in the gap between what she's been taught to want and what she's quietly building in notebooks, closets, and midnight kitchens. When a devastating family crisis shatters the philosophy she was raised on, Nia is forced to stop waiting for permission and start making things with her own hands.What Grows From Heat is a novel about hair and heat, money and motherhood, community and criticism, and the terrifying, exhilarating cost of becoming someone the people who love you never predicted.For every girl who was told to choose safety — and chose herself instead.