Debut novelist in national spotlight for teen love story set in Detroit

It was a dream come true for a first-time novelist. “MY BOOK WAS ON A BILLBOARD IN TIMES SQUARE!!,” wrote Ebony LaDelle in joyous all-caps on an Instagram post showing the huge video ad.

Now that's a New York City moment. Yet Detroit has been just as amazing to the author of “Love Radio,” an irresistible young-adult romance that has been described as “Hitch” meets “The Sun Is Also a Star.”

“The way people in the D have spoken about and talked about and hyped ‘Love Radio,’ that, to me, is the biggest credibility, bigger than the billboard in Times Square if I’m being honest,” says LaDelle, who grew up in the Motor City. “Seeing people from the D have a positive reception to a story that I poured everything into has been the greatest thing ever.”

"Love Radio," recommended on NBC’s “Today” as a top summer read, is about to be in the spotlight again. On Saturday, LaDelle is set to appear at a livestreamed panel and a book signing at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. The event, one of the top annual literary gatherings, will feature dozens of guests including Pulitzer winner David Maraniss (whose latest book is about Jim Thorpe), singer-songwriter Janelle Monae (who has a short story collection, “The Memory Librarian”) and Free Press columnist Mitch Albom (who’s marking the 25th anniversary of his “Tuesdays With Morrie”).

Best-selling romance author Jasmine Guillory recently chose “Love Radio” as an essential 2022 summer beach read on a "Today" segment. “I just love it so much. ... It’s about two teenagers in Detroit who are finding their way to one another. ... It’s also about their families, their dreams for the future, who they want to be as people,” she said.

The book also has been called “one of the most Detroit books I've ever read,” by Aaron Foley, a Detroiter whose debut novel, “Boys Come First,” arrived May 31, the same day as “Love Radio.."

The YA novel centers on Prince, a high school student who hosts a love advice show on local radio, and Danielle, a classmate (and Prince’s longtime crush) who has withdrawn from dating and socializing for an unknown reason. When Prince runs into Dani (as she’s nicknamed) at the Detroit Public Library, he starts a conversation that doesn’t exactly go well. But they form a tentative friendship that leads to her agreeing to have three dates with him.

This isn’t a sugarcoated version of young love. Along with handling his radio job, Prince is shouldering the responsibility of caring for his mother, who has a chronic illness, and helping raise his younger brother. With his father absent from the picture, Prince is having trouble keeping up with school and fulfilling his commitments.

As for Dani, she is eager to go to New York City and pursue her dream of writing, but she's struggling to finish her college application essays. Although her parents and friends would gladly help, Dani is keeping a traumatic secret that prevents her from reaching out to them. As a result, she avoids going out and having fun until Prince makes her reconsider letting down her guard.

“I wanted to show that these are two teenagers, at the end of the day, who are sweet, who are loving, who are caring, who are just trying to figure it out. And I don’t think that we give enough teenagers credit for that, especially teenagers who are living in the inner city,” said LaDelle of her characters.

“I wanted to show, when we talk about inner-city life, what kids are facing … and yet look at these two beautiful kids, still able to find love, still trying to figure out how to be better versions of themselves for each other.”

LaDelle says she has been gratified by the response from real teens. “One of the beauties of writing this book and having fans now reach out to me and DM me is that so many teenagers have said: ‘My goodness I’ve never felt so seen in a story before.’ ”

While growing up in Oak Park and Southfield and spending time on Detroit’s east side with her father’s family, LaDelle was always interested in writing — and good enough at it to make her elementary school teacher cry with her poem about the death of the classroom gerbil. Although she has saved some of her childhood poems and stories, she doesn’t have a copy of that one.

“I can’t even remember what grade it was, but I hope if my teacher ever sees this or reads this, maybe they’ll be able to send it to me.” she said with a laugh.

LaDelle says she was raised equally by her divorced parents, spending the school year in Detroit with her mom and summers in Las Vegas with her dad. Around the time she reached high school, the schedule reversed. But Detroit was always a part of her life. In fact, it was Detroit radio that inspired the plot hook of the novel.

Once she settled on Prince being a love expert in the story line, LaDelle had to decide where he would dispense his advice. Just to his friends? On social media? “What I kept thinking of was driving to school with my mom in the morning, listening to the radio. I thought of 'Mason in the Morning.' I thought of Steve Harvey. I thought of Rickey Smiley. I thought of all these morning shows … and the celebrity gossip they would have and the pranks and the really bad love advice. And I felt like it would be really dope if a teenager was the one to show all these radio hosts how it’s done.”

The Howard University alum has had an impressive career in publishing as a marketing director. While at Harper-Collins, she worked on campaigns for authors like Angie Thomas (“The Hate U Give”) and co-hosted “Why Not YA?,” a monthly video series devoted to the teen book genre. Later, she was marketing director for Penguin Random House. Wherever she worked, LaDelle saw the need for more representation in publishing and was a devoted advocate for finding and helping promote authors of color.

For now, she has stepped away from publishing and is focusing full time on writing. “I’m calling it a sabbatical. We’ll see,” she said.

LaDelle started writing the first few chapters of “Love Radio” in 2019. After the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and the world went into quarantine, she started using her former commuting time to work on the project. She recalls those difficult days of “seeing Detroit family and friends catch COVID and pass away” and describes writing about the city for “Love Radio” as a healing mechanism.

Detroit is vividly portrayed throughout the book, from Prince and Dani’s school, Mass Tech High (a nod to the city’s Cass Tech High School), to their visit to the Christmas tree at Campus Martius to a a quick stop at Dutch Girl Donuts.

“One of the reasons I put Dutch Girl Donuts in the book was because I remember reading a Free Press article about the owners and how the husband and wife met at the doughnut shop, how she was a teacher and she would come in to Dutch Girl Donuts and ask if they had day-old doughnuts for students who were hungry. And the owner fell in love with her immediately. I’m like: ‘That’s a love story within a love story. Come on! I have to write this in.' ”

In one of the book’s most tender and engaging scenes, Prince, who has yet to have a real date with Dani, volunteers to take out her braids, a time-consuming chore that LaDelle says is “almost like a love language, just like a labor of love.”

She continues: “When I was trying to craft a scene that, one, would force Danielle to interact with Prince even though she didn’t want to, and, two, that still felt extremely intimate, that was the first thing that popped in my head. Once it did, I was like, 'Oh, this is going to be so much fun to write.' It’s very practical. You’re stuck next to someone for hours on end, so of course you’re going to talk to them and get to know them and learn things about them.”

LaDelle, who now lives in Washington, D.C., sounds moved by the “very lovely” reactions she has gotten during promotional trips to Detroit, including a July event hosted by the Detroit Pistons and featuring a discussion moderated by Foley and a book signing. She admits she was nervous about how “Love Radio” would be received in her hometown.

“Especially when you’re one of the first people to do something like this for a city that does not usually get a positive representation, it comes with a little bit of anxiety,” she said.

Not to worry. “Love Radio” lives up to the promise that she made to herself about the book. Says LaDelle, “I wanted to make sure I did the best job I could if I was going to represent my city like this.”

To watch Ebony LaDelle’s livestreamed panel discussion at 1 p.m. Saturday at the National Book Festival, go to the event’s official site: https://www.loc.gov/events/2022-national-book-festival/schedule/watch-the-festival/main-stage/

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'Love Radio' from debut novelist Ebony LaDelle is set in Detroit