NIGHTCRAWLING - by Leila Mottley (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A dazzling novel about a young black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system--the debut of a blazingly original voice that "bursts at the seams of every page and swallows you whole" (Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There There)

Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent--which has more than doubled--and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed.

One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. And her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.

Full of edge, raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before.

Review Quotes

"Leila Mottley has a poet's delicate touch when she tells us the most brutal, heart-crushing truths. This is an electrifying debut."
--Dave Eggers

"There is a compelling argument to make that Nightcrawling is the most compelling book written by an American teenager in my lifetime. Somehow, even that feels too brittle for the way Leila Mottley pulls us through a body, a city and a nation equally consumed with crawling toward liberation and jogging toward inequitable failure. Nightcrawling is a scorching, incredibly readable book that takes seriously the task of readerly provocation on every page. Get ready. Or don't. It doesn't matter. Leila Mottley is here."
--Kiese Laymon

"Leila Mottley's commanding debut, inspired by the life events of one woman's struggle for body and soul against crushing exploitation, is fierce and devastating, rendered with electrifying urgency by this colossal young talent."
--Ayana Mathis

"With its powerful poetry and courageous, unsparing vision, Nightcrawling is more than just a magnificent debut novel. It is a bid, by this prodigiously gifted young writer, to heal a broken world."
--Ruth Ozeki

"Leila Mottley has an extraordinary gift. She writes with the humility and sparkle of a child, but with the skill and deft touch of a wizened, seasoned storyteller."
--James McBride

"The writing in Leila Mottley's Nightcrawling erupts and flows like lava, makes hot bright an Oakland that runs the city's uncontrollable brilliance, its destructive and generative veins the same, Mottley's energetic writing here too, bursts at the seams of every page, pushing you deeper into a story you can't help but continue swallowing, stay thirsty for, while it swallows you whole."
--Tommy Orange

About the Author

LEILA MOTTLEY is the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. Her work has been featured in The New York Times and Oprah Daily. She was born and raised in Oakland, where she continues to live. Nightcrawling is her first novel.