Hot Wax

The novel alternates between chapters set in 1989 and the present day, punctuated by snapshots that fill the decades between. Both threads follow Suzanne Delgado, daughter of Gil Delgado, a Cuban American rock musician who spent his career on the margins of the music industry.

In the prologue, Suzanne, now approximately forty, drives Gil's 1968 Ford Ranchero, nicknamed Blondie, through the Florida night after his death. A cassette hidden in the glove box plays Gil's voice singing an unreleased song, and she swerves off the road in tears. She finds an old atlas with routes she traced in crayon as a child, a red line drawn through the desert to Las Vegas.

The past timeline begins in 1988, when Suzanne is ten and living with her mother, Nora, in a cramped Baltimore apartment. Gil is perpetually absent, touring with his band, Gil and the Kills, while Nora works two jobs and resents him for it. Suzanne befriends Doug Sandusky, a stock boy at a mall record store who pays her to help catch shoplifters. She buys a Polaroid camera and starts documenting her world. When Gil returns after a long absence, Nora discovers the hidden cassettes and camera, destroys them, and accuses Suzanne of stealing. Gil and Nora erupt into a vicious fight. Someone slaps Suzanne hard enough to split her lip. She hides in a closet until morning. Gil is gone again.

In the present, Suzanne is stranded at the Sundew Value Inn in the Florida Panhandle, where the Ranchero broke down. She has fled her husband, Rob Gabbard, leaving a voicemail declaring the marriage over. A young man named Simon, who is missing two fingers from a traumatic injury, offers to fix the car in exchange for towing his Airstream trailer to Georgia. Simon's traveling companion, Phoebe, buys and sells vintage goods at flea markets. She takes an interest in Gil's belongings and hangs a tarnished dart pendant around Suzanne's neck.

After Nora remarries, Gil takes eleven-year-old Suzanne on a summer tour. She meets the Kills: Ruby, the bass player; Nash, the drummer and Ruby's husband; and Eric "Skelly" Skillman, the volatile, tattooed guitarist. She also meets Gracie, Gil's girlfriend and tour manager, who teaches her to read road maps. Before each show, Gil leads a ritual chant, asking each member what they are there to do. The answer escalates: "KILL!"

The tour builds toward glory as their single "New Blues" gets radio airplay. Suzanne witnesses Gil's shock at hearing his own voice on the air. But Skelly's mercurial temper destabilizes the group. In Nebraska, a hostile audience member throws a bottle at Gil's head and stomps on Suzanne after she falls from scaffolding. Skelly smashes the attacker with his guitar and carries both Gil and Suzanne to safety, his hands lacerated to the bone.

The Kills then open for Babel Mouth, a more notorious band led by the DeWitt siblings, Vince and Nicky. Skelly and Vince develop an explosive onstage chemistry. Offstage, Skelly becomes dependent on pills and alcohol and drifts from Gil. Gil's manager, Louie Cafarelli, privately threatens Gil: Cooperate with Babel Mouth or be replaced. The tour culminates at the Wrecking Ball festival near Las Vegas. Backstage, Vince hands Suzanne a camcorder, and she records the entire performance. The show is electrifying, but Skelly's eyes through the viewfinder are completely empty.

After the show, Suzanne goes to Skelly's motel room for a Band-Aid and finds him with a stranger called Elko. Skelly gives her a drink laced with something that makes her dizzy, dabs powder on her tongue, and pulls her into his lap, his hand sliding under her bathing suit strap. Gil bursts in, orders Suzanne out, and a violent fight erupts through the wall. Gracie sends Suzanne to a diner and tells her: "You didn't hear anything." Three days later, Skelly is dead, his skull smashed with his own guitar. Nicky DeWitt surrenders to police; Gil is hospitalized. At the airport, Nora arrives to take Suzanne home, and Gracie reluctantly lets her go.

In the present timeline, Suzanne's relationships with Simon and Phoebe deepen. After Simon kisses her, Phoebe gently reveals they both have feelings for her: "Love never runs out. There's enough for you, too." They visit Simon's aunt Arlette, who killed her abusive husband and served ten years in prison. Arlette challenges Suzanne: "You don't owe anyone your misery." Suzanne decides to travel with them in the Lifeboat, their Airstream trailer, and the three become lovers. When Phoebe plays Gil and the Kills' album Don't Stop the Rot, Suzanne reveals for the first time that Gil was her father.

Rob tracks Suzanne methodically. He buys a black Dodge pickup, pressures Louie Cafarelli for information in Tampa, and finds the Lifeboat's Instagram account. At the Fort Worth Stockyards, he confronts Suzanne in a saloon, grabs her wrist, and forces her wedding ring back on. She throws the ring across the bar and demands a divorce. Simon intervenes, and Rob throws a wild punch that misses.

Snapshot chapters fill the intervening years. At seventeen, Suzanne crashes a car, develops an opiate addiction, and saves Nora during a miscarriage before fleeing to New York on a Greyhound bus. She works at audionaut, a music newsletter run by Doug, then leaves for a photography fellowship and publishes Dust and Bones, a photo book about ghost towns. She marries Rob, but the marriage erodes. On their fifth anniversary, he asks her to have children; she refuses. When he presses himself on her despite her refusal, she recoils, cracks her elbow, and locks herself in a linen closet.

The crisis comes at Sanctuary, an abandoned mining town Suzanne once photographed, unmarked on modern maps. She leads Simon and Phoebe there to hide. Rob, who has been staking out a nearby highway for days, traces them to the ghost town. He bursts into the Lifeboat and tries to drag Suzanne out. Phoebe shoots him with a revolver, hitting his shoulder. Suzanne stabs him with the dart pendant and breaks free, then climbs into Rob's idling pickup and runs him down. They bury him, burn his identification, and abandon the truck. Suzanne hangs the dart pendant on a stone angel: "I wish I could have saved myself. Saved us all the trouble." She drives Blondie west toward California.

The final chapters braid together. In 1989, Suzanne leaves Baltimore, rescuing a broken photo of Gil and Blondie from the wastebasket, terrified that once her name is changed, Gil will never find her. In the present, she arrives at a ranch in Paso Robles, where Gracie has lived since Gil's death. Gracie shows Suzanne a closet full of Gil's archived recordings the world has never heard. When Suzanne asks why Gil left her a truckload of junk instead, Gracie answers: "I think he knew you'd go looking for answers. That you'd find your way back to yourself, but you'd have to get there on your own." Suzanne retrieves the 8mm tape from the Wrecking Ball show, which she has guarded since Miami, labeled in her childhood handwriting. "The whole world should have been there," she tells Gracie. "I want the whole world to see it."