HEAT (Between Two Calls to Prayer)

Between Two Calls to Prayer is a poetic memoir series about girlhood, exile, survival, identity, and belonging somewhere between Minnesota and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.Book 1: HEAT begins with the first shock of leaving one life behind and entering another. Through spare, intimate poems, Dena McGuiggan remembers the heat of Saudi Arabia not as scenery, but as something physical, emotional, and formative.These poems move through childhood memories of Jeddah: the call to prayer, the Red Sea, women’s rooms, old streets, desert silence, homesickness, family wounds, and the complicated love of a place that became both home and hurt.HEAT is about what the body remembers, what childhood survives, and how a girl learns to belong in a world that keeps asking her to become someone else.This first book in the series is for readers drawn to memoir poetry, immigrant and third-culture stories, women’s resilience, post-traumatic growth, and the quiet power of memory. Read more