“Hot Wax is the story of a woman trying to run from, while trying to make sense of, her dark past. She gets lost on the open road, but her husband isn't willing to let her go so easily. A dark, mysterious, captivating story.”
— Maddie Rasbold, The End Bookstore, Allentown, PA
Description
Hot Wax is “a propulsive father-daughter story” (Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad) and a journey of self-discovery that “captures the joy and danger of rock ’n’ roll” (Publishers Weekly) through one woman’s reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood.
Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills’ wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.
The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost forever: desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.
Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back—where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.
About the Author
M.L. Rio has been an actor, a bookseller, an academic, and a music writer. She holds an MA in Shakespeare studies and a PhD in English literature. She is the author of the internationally bestselling novel If We Were Villains, the USA TODAY bestselling novella Graveyard Shift, and Hot Wax. She never stays in one place for long, but keeps her books, records, and four-legged sidekick in south Philadelphia.
Praise For…
A Most Anticipated Book from Garden & Gun and BookPage
“A brooding, doubled-sized, highway thriller.”—The New York Times
“Like multiple guitarists unspooling an epic jam, Rio knows how to ratchet up the tension. . . . she’s got us planted in front of her loudspeakers, like the old Maxell tape guy.”—San Francisco Chronicle
"The best book about rock'n'roll music since High Fidelity."—The Irish Examiner
“Hot Wax is a passionate novel that takes readers on turbulent joyrides while exploring both the glory and the gore of live rock ’n’ roll.”—BookPage (starred review)
"Rio (If We Were Villains) captures the joy and danger of rock ’n’ roll in her raucous latest...Rio keeps the reader guessing—and turning the pages—while shining a light on Suzanne’s emotional scars. This electrifies."—Publishers Weekly
"Sensory and visceral, Hot Wax is a propulsive father-daughter story infused with rock and roll down to its very cadences. M. L Rio is a force to be reckoned with."—Jennifer Egan
“Hot Wax is the story of a woman trying to run from, while trying to make sense of, her dark past. She gets lost on the open road, but her husband isn't willing to let her go so easily. A dark, mysterious, captivating story.”
