100 songs. One woman's awakening. A rhythm that refuses silence.
When music becomes the only map through an unfamiliar world.
Terri, a Midwestern music lover from the Detroit suburbs, follows her musician boyfriend to Belize for a funeral—and steps into a world where Garifuna drums, Mayan cosmology, and ancestral traditions shape daily life. What begins as a journey to honor the dead becomes a reckoning with everything she thought she knew. Christian values collide with Daoist wisdom. Rational explanations crumble against spiritual practices that illuminate truths she's been avoiding—including her own role in what's unraveling around her.
Guided by music that connects past wounds to future healing, Terri must navigate folklore, mysterious cenotes, and a maternal love that becomes the most dangerous magic of all.
Song of Hummingbird Highway is a debut literary novel unlike anything you've read:
- 100+ curated songs woven as healing metaphor
- 30 original black-and-white photographs as chapter headings
- Garifuna, Mayan, and Caribbean traditions honored through cultural collaboration
- Magical realism that never explains away the magic
From Los Angeles to Belize's sacred caves, this is a story as intricate and luminous as the music that inspired it.
Perfect for fans of: Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, Julia Alvarez, Yaa Gyasi.
"A story about the lies we believe about ourselves, and the long walk it takes to unlearn them… The book blends romance, trauma, folklore, and self-rescue into something that feels bold and deeply human."
- LITERARY TITAN
"An exploration of love, belief, and self-reclamation that hums with the conviction that creation is an act of survival."
- KIRKUS REVIEWS
"A luminous, unforgettable journey through pain, folklore, and faith toward a hard-won discovery: Sometimes the path to saving the people we love begins with the discovery of self."
- SURBHI BANSAL, author of Do Not Follow
LITERARY TITAN BOOK AWARD WINNER
