“Heat Visions” is an unpublished short story collection by Damieka Thomas. This collection explores coming-of-age while dealing with the complexities of mixed-race identity, addiction, queerness, and loss. Female friendships and queer relationships, relationships between mothers and daughters, the loss of a father figure, the complex relationship between dreams and reality, and the difficulties of generational trauma are fixtures in these stories. In “After Mia,” two best friends growing up in Fort Bragg, CA learn what it is to find comfort in friendship amid the chaos of familial addiction and childhood trauma. In “A Good Night to Die,” a young man stuck in Marysville, CA contemplates the loss of his father and, spurred on by a crush on his best friend, makes a decision that may change the course of his life. In “the dark,” a world plunged into darkness suddenly sees the light, pushing a confrontation between the narrator and her grieving mother. In "Praying," a woman learns of the ways in which mothers may be close to God. And in the titular story, a young girl’s father returns to her life, only to remind her of his impermanence.

In these stories, taking place over the winding roads of Fort Bragg, CA, the man-made lakes of Marysville, CA, and the potholed streets of Live Oak, CA, Black Indigenous girls and women fight hard to manifest a western destiny that was never made for them, with varying levels of success. They learn the transformative and sometimes toxic power of female friendship. They take long trips up the coast. They drink too much. They keep secrets. And above all, they return to the redwoods and to the beach, seeking solace in their tiny, forgotten piece of the dream of the west.