Love Is a Burning Thing

A Memoir

By: Nina St. Pierre

Narrated by: Nina St. Pierre

Winner of the 2025 Housatonic Book Award for Nonfiction

A riveting memoir about a daughter’s investigation into the wirings of her loving, unpredictable mother: a woman who lived her life in pursuit of the divine, and who started two big fires, decades apart.

Ten years before Nina was born, her mother lit herself on fire in a dual suicide attempt. During her recovery in the burn-unit, a nurse initiated her into Transcendental Meditation. From that day on, her mother's pain became intertwined with the pursuit of enlightenment.

Growing up, Nina longed for a normal life; instead, she and her brother were at the whims of their mother, who chased ascension up and down the state of California, swapping out spiritual practices as often as apartments. When they finally settled at the foot of a mountain—reputed to be cosmic—in Northern California, Nina hoped life would stabilize. But after another fire, and a tragic fallout, she was forced to confront the shadow side of her mother's mystical narratives. With obsessive dedication, Nina began to knit together the truth that would eventually release her.

In Love Is a Burning Thing, Nina interrogates what happens to those undiagnosed and unseen. This is a transfixing, moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship that also examines mental health, stigma, poverty, and gender—and the role that spirituality plays within each. Nina’s writing skirts the mystical, untangles it, and ultimately illuminates it with brilliance.

Vivid. Poetic. Searingly-honest

This is an amazingly written memoir. A true must read. There is no lull in St. Pierre’s story telling. Written with poetic precision. It’s an incredibly transcending read.

In depth expansive memour

As I got into this story I couldn't stop listening... such a compelling memoir of self-exploration and self-revelation and so beautifully rendered and narrated. it's an a tale of experiences unlike those most of us will ever know. The language and imagery are stunning, the descriptions often shocking, but there is so much love in this story and an ultimate in-depth understanding of the human condition with all its nuances and mystery. I highly recommend it.
Lynda S.

transformative story of mothering, spirit, and mental health

This book is a beautiful narrative of what it means to be a mother, a daughter, and a family in the midst of struggle, love, poverty, and perseverance. Nina forges vibrant shards of memory into a herstory that transcends time. The reader is there with her - in the Tenderloin, on the road, in the places made home by family, friends, and love from San Diego to Mt. Shasta - from California to Texas and Florida - she brings us along for the blooming of life and the discovery that madness can be both messy and saintly, nightmarish and godly.