Hush Little Children
A novel by Hayan Charara
Coming September 30, 2025
Pre-orders available soon
Retailer/reviewer information
“Hayan Charara is one of my favorite writers alive.”
About the book:
In a city divided by fear and hate, a couple must fight to protect their unborn child
On the same day the child suicides first start, a couple in the East Side finds out they’re pregnant. One has nothing to do with the other, but in a city rife with tension between the East Side and the West Side, they have reason to be concerned. Then when a teen’s murder-suicide rocks the city, many see a pattern, that it’s the failings of the East Side and those people—you know, those people—who live there.
The incidents are politicized, disinformation is spread, and a group called “The Good Neighbors” is created. Led by a preacher-politician whose entire platform is built on hate, and egged on by TV and social media, The Good Neighbors launch a campaign of violence and fear to rid East Side of all children—born and unborn—whom they think will infect the young minds of the neighboring communities.
For our protagonist and his pregnant wife, their status as East Sider’s—both by address and appearance—means having to look over their shoulder. And as tensions mount, it means protecting their unborn child at all costs.
With themes of xenophobia, reproductive rights, and media-driven extremism, this book is more timely than ever.
“A haunting and suspenseful story of tragic loss and blind faith. In this searing novel, Hayan Charara explores how a bizarre epidemic of child suicides affects a racially diverse suburb, forcing a pregnant couple to question their good fortune. Hush, Little Children is a wonderful debut.”
“For years, Hayan Charara has stunned us with his poetry—his genius with words, the images those words awoke both on the page and in our subconscious. Now, Charara astounds with his first novel, a mystery of sorts: Why are neighborhood children dying by suicide, even taking other children with them when they do? Well, here’s the deal: I will not solve the mystery for you but know this: the nameless narrator tells us his story in the bigger scheme of things, and for once, from somewhere other than the Judeo-Christian, Western-European perspective. And Charara’s fiction is poetic too, not so much in form, but in its almost photorealistic capture of the ‘American’ condition—like it or not. And at the end, a twist as deft as any Charara has created in his poems.”
A portion of the proceeds from this book goes to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Palestine Children’s Relief Fund provides medical and humanitarian relief collectively and individually to children throughout the Levant, regardless of their nationality or religion.
Hayan Charara