All My Rage

The story follows Sal and Noor, two Pakistani-American teenagers living in the Mojave Desert. Sal struggles to maintain his family’s failing motel while his mother, Misbah, faces terminal illness and his father succumbs to alcoholism. Meanwhile, Noor works at her uncle’s liquor store while secretly applying to colleges to escape his suffocating control. The narrative balances three perspectives, including Misbah’s past in Lahore, to show how ancestral trauma and systemic racism impact their present lives. As Sal makes a desperate, illegal choice to save the business, the physical and emotional distance between the two friends collapses under the weight of grief and addiction.

This book is for readers interested in the specific pressures of the immigrant experience and the realities of rural poverty. It attracts those looking for stories about how young people navigate the fallout of parental mistakes and institutional failures. Readers walk away with a stark understanding of the cycle of generational debt and the logistical hurdles faced by those living on the margins of society. The text provides a window into the intersection of faith, cultural expectations, and the resilience required to survive when safety nets fail.