Love Is a Burning Thing

A Memoir

By: Nina St. Pierre

Narrated by: Nina St. Pierre

Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2024 Nina St. Pierre (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Most Anticipated by Esquire, Los Angeles Times, Bustle, and Alta Online

“This debut memoir is a daughter’s reckoning: a quest to understand her mystery of a mother, an exploration of mysticism and untreated mental illness, and an indictment of the systems that failed their family…St. Pierre and I grew up in the same remote corner of the west, but you don’t need to know it in order to appreciate the descriptions that add lush texture to this searching, empathetic narrative.” —Esquire, "Best Memoirs of 2024"

“A kaleidoscopic, illuminating reflection on mental health, poverty, gender, and spirituality.” —Bustle, “Spring’s Most Anticipated Books”

“St. Pierre crafts a vivid, richly textured, harrowing memoir of her bond, both steadfast and delicate, with her mother…St. Pierre emerges with a treatise for thinking about not only mental illness and family trauma, but also the ability of belief to alternately empower, embattle, and release. An exhilarating, heart-rending familial portrait.” —Kirkus, *starred review*

“Love is a Burning Thing is a spectacular, fearless memoir, written with real muscle and voice, guided by an electric eye for truth and compassion. I loved this book.” —Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up

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.