She was The Voice, and then she was a tragedy. Or so the story goes. Since her death in 2012, the life of Whitney Houston has been shaped by the popular imagination into a simplistic tale of angelic rise and pitiable fall.

But as Emily Lordi argues in this magisterial new biography, such an assumption fails to convey just how hard Whitney worked to become herself, to share her gifts at the height of her powers and to passionately resist her own end. In Holding Lightning, Lordi reveals the dedication Houston applied to everything she did, from her encyclopaedic knowledge of music to the groundbreaking networks of Black creators that she worked so hard to create and uplift. This book fundamentally reappraises Houston's life and art, shifting our perspective so we can finally see Whitney in all her real, imperfect, fallible, resilient humanity.