Hollow Fires

When high school freshman Jawad Ali, the son of Iraqi refugees to the U.S., crafts a model jet pack for Halloween, he's excited to showcase the approved makerspace project to his classmates and teachers. But the things go badly wrong with the costume: mistaken for wearing "something like a suicide bomber vest," Jawad is marched out in handcuffs and suspended from school. Then, after receiving a series of threatening texts, he's murdered. But Jawad's ghost remains, communicating with 17-year-old Indian American Safiya Mirza, an aspiring journalist who grows to believe in their connection, and whom he leads to his body in a neglected area of Jackson Park. Spurred on by his spirit, Safiya works to solve the murder, a journey that forces her to face dark truths about their community, in which a festering hatred has led to threats against her mosque. Writing in dual perspectives that highlight Jawad's innocence and Safiya's determination amid personal themes of romance and friendship, Ahmed (Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know) weaves evocative prose with images, articles, and text messages to explore with skill and depth the twining of social media in an age of misinformation, alt-right political movements, and racism and Islamophobia. Ages 12-up. Agent: Joanna Volpe, New Leaf Literary. (May)

Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Gr 9 Up--In this short-chaptered, dual-narrative exploration of the tragic confluence of Islamophobia and white supremacy, readers are privy to the diary entries of Safira, a young second-gen high school journalist's investigation into several hate crimes she thinks are connected: a cyberattack on the school newspaper, vandalism of her parents' Indian food store, and what's worse, a missing fellow high school student. Jawah, a 14-year-old child of Iraqi refugees is falsely accused of being a suicide bomber by a teacher after making a jetpack at the school's makerspace and is now missing. Jawah's chapters are brief attempts at directing Safira towards him and through his thoughtful recollections, readers slowly discover his truth. Introducing each chapter are statements in the form of facts, truths, and lies; interwoven are news reports, court briefings, police statements, blog posts, book chapters, radio transcripts, and more. This page-turner is sophisticated and easy-to-digest, a difficult balance to achieve, but Ahmed is extremely adept at threading pieces of a murder mystery together within the greater context of how the media influences youth. The portrait of immigrant families, small business owners both, and the role that kindness plays in undoing the spectrum of hurt--from bullying to the adoption of Nietzsche-fueled white supremacy--perpetrated in a small-town setting makes this a must-read for patrons in libraries across the country. VERDICT This impassioned ride toward the truth, based on a true story, will make readers think about the media bites they consume and white youth's easy access to radicalization.--Sara Lissa Paulson

Copyright 2022 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

"With Hollow Fires, Samira Ahmed offers us an impossible-to-put-down thriller that is both spectacularly haunting and deeply thoughtful. Safiya and Jawad are not narrators we usually see, and their harrowing story is a wholly original commentary on perception, community, and the way society weighs one life against another." —Sabaa Tahir #1 NYT bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes