Highblood (A Novel)

“They say that as a young pup she liked to bite. She ripped chunks of flesh from three servants and nearly bled one of them to death.”

In Barranquilla, Carnival belongs to the living, the dead, and the women who feed on both.

Julieta Vanterroso was born with fangs, a beautiful little monster in a family that knew exactly what to do with monsters. Her grandmother, Julia Vanterroso, has built an empire out of blood: the Sanguina factory, the Highblood Club, the old Carnival families, the politicians, the servants, the bodies that can be drained and paid and forgotten. In Barranquilla, the Vanterrosos do not hide what they are. They dress it in lace, teach it to dance, put it on a float, and call it tradition.

Now Julieta is meant to become Queen of Carnival. She must smile, dance, read the Bando, marry the man chosen for her, and step into the future her grandmother has prepared since the day she was born. But as Carnival approaches and the Vanterroso family begins to turn on itself, bodies appear where they shouldn’t, old rituals start to fail, and the women around Julieta grow hungry in ways even blood cannot satisfy.

By the time Carnival crowns its queen, Julieta will have to decide how much of herself she is willing to lose to become what her family has been waiting for.

Drawing from Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions, Highblood transforms Barranquilla Carnival into a landscape of blood, spectacle, and ritual, where women inherit hunger like a family heirloom and survival depends on who is willing to devour whom first.