All the Pain We Endure
Cover created by Morgan Ryan
RELEASING NOVEMBER 2026
1455 books is the publishing imprint of 1455 Literary Arts, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating storytelling, empowering creative communities and supporting writers at every stage—offering professional publishing, meaningful visibility, and a commitment to authentic, impactful work.
1455’s annual book contest celebrates exceptional literary talent by discovering and amplifying distinctive voices in contemporary literature. Through this initiative, 1455 provides authors with an opportunity to share their stories with a wider audience and connect with readers. Melanie S. Hatter’s All the Pain We Endure was selected as the winning novel for its compelling storytelling, emotional depth, and exploration of the complexities of the human experience.
An intimate story of love, family, race, and inherited trauma
Melanie S. Hatter
Author of All the Pain We Endure
Melanie S. Hatter’s All the Pain We Endure follows Raebelle “Rae” Johnson, a biracial massage therapist in Washington, D.C., whose unusual ability to glimpse the pain carried by others has made her acutely aware of the wounds people hide—and determined to keep her own buried.
Still haunted by a volatile relationship with her father and wary of the vulnerability intimacy demands, Rae has learned to protect herself by keeping others at a distance. But when she meets Kai, a martial artist carrying wounds and secrets of his own, their growing connection begins to challenge Rae’s assumptions about love, strength, family, and what it means to truly know another person.
As their relationship deepens, Rae is forced to reckon with a past that refuses to remain safely contained. Family tensions, buried trauma, and generations of racial pain converge, revealing how profoundly the injuries of one generation can shape the lives of the next—and how difficult it can be to distinguish the pain we inherit from the pain we choose to carry.
At once an intimate love story and a searching exploration of family, race, trauma, identity, and healing, All the Pain We Endure asks whether confronting the past can free us from repeating it—and what it takes to break cycles of pain, risk vulnerability, and believe ourselves worthy of love.
All The Pain We Endure explores the depth of love—for family, for friends and partners, and ultimately, for ourselves. Through the sure hands of novelist Melanie Hatter—and of her protagonist, Rae, a gifted massage therapist in the DC area, whose sight goes beyond the now to the past and beyond, we are moved, through deeply felt moments of anger, joy, grief, to understand that while pain endures, so does love.
All The Pain We Endure explores the depth of love—for family, for friends and partners, and ultimately, for ourselves. Through the sure hands of novelist Melanie Hatter—and of her protagonist, Rae, a gifted massage therapist in the DC area, whose sight goes beyond the now to the past and beyond, we are moved, through deeply felt moments of anger, joy, grief, to understand that while pain endures, so does love.
—Caroline Bock
Author of The Other Beautiful People
To open a book by Melanie Hatter is to be drawn into a rich community of characters grappling with the complexities of the world while figuring out how to love one another despite everything around them. In All the Pain We Endure, we dive into the life of Rae, a biracial woman reckoning with her upbringing in a post-divorce, racially-mixed family, seeking to maintain a relationship with both parents despite her father’s abusive nature and unrelenting disapproval of her life choices. We become invested in Rae’s efforts to escape the dysfunctional relationship models she’s been exposed to and replicated herself. We root for her, and are reluctant to leave her world behind when the novel ends. Another engrossing read from Hatter.
—Tara Campbell
Kimbilio Alum, Author of City of Dancing Gargoyles and TreeVolution
About the Author
Melanie S. Hatter is the author of Malawi’s Sisters, which was selected by Edwidge Danticat as the winner of the inaugural Kimbilio National Fiction Prize and published by Four Way Books in 2019. Her debut novel, The Color of My Soul, won the 2011 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Fiction Prize, and Let No One Weep for Me, Stories of Love and Loss was released in 2015. Melanie was a licensed massage therapist for fourteen years and currently serves on the Development team at My Sister’s Place, the first domestic violence shelter in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the writing faculty of New Directions in Writing training program and serves on the board of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. When she’s not working, she enjoys spending time in nature with her dog, Roo.
Learn more at melanieshatter.com
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