Burn Down, Rise Up

April 11, 2022
An urban legend turns all too real in Tirado’s genre-bending debut, a suspenseful love letter to the Bronx. As missing-person reports rise within the borough, 16-year-old Raquel, a Black student of Dominican descent, takes AP classes, attends an after-school art club, and hangs out with best friend Aaron. But things turn chaotic for Raquel when her mother is attacked, resulting in a mold infection and requiring a medically induced coma. Soon after, Raquel and Aaron’s mutual crush, Charlize, seeks out Raquel’s help to find her missing cousin, Francisco, a Fordham University student who has recently disappeared. As Raquel, who usually lives with her Christian mother, adjusts to staying at her dad’s apartment, where he practices Santeria, she begins having nightmares about a burning Bronx and a man in a corduroy jacket—and awakening from these dreams covered in abrasions. The friends work to locate Francisco, uncovering a cursed challenge that seems connected to the missing people. But the only way to be sure is to play the strict three-rule game, which employs insidious traps and often claims players, placing them in a hellish imprint of a given area’s most tragic period. Desperate to save their loved ones, the friends agree to take part. In a speculative novel that blends elements of horror with a history of gentrification and systemic racism, Tirado explores, with insight, the importance of community in the face of trauma and adversity. Most characters are Afro-Latinx; an author’s note concludes. Ages 14–up. Agent: Kristina Pérez, Zeno Agency.