The Travelers by Regina Porter

The Travelers by Regina Porter

American history comes to vivid, engaging life in this tale of two interconnected families (one white, one black) that spans from the 1950s to Barack Obama's first year as president. . . . The complex, beautifully drawn characters are unique and indelible.--Entertainment Weekly

An astoundingly audacious debut.--O: The Oprah Magazine - A gorgeous generational saga.--New York Post

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOKS OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE - FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL

Meet James Samuel Vincent, an affluent Manhattan attorney who shirks his modest Irish American background but hews to his father's meandering ways. James muddles through a topsy-turvy relationship with his son, Rufus, which is further complicated when Rufus marries Claudia Christie.

Claudia's mother--Agnes Miller Christie--is a beautiful African American woman who survives a chance encounter on a Georgia road that propels her into a new life in the Bronx. Soon after, her husband, Eddie Christie, is called to duty on an air craft carrier in Vietnam, where Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead becomes Eddie's life anchor, as he grapples with mounting racial tensions on the ship and counts the days until he will see Agnes again.

These unforgettable characters' lives intersect with a cast of lovers and friends--the unapologetic black lesbian who finds her groove in 1970s Berlin; a moving man stranded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during a Thanksgiving storm; two half-brothers who meet as adults in a crayon factory; and a Coney Island waitress whose Prince Charming is too good to be true.

With piercing humor, exacting dialogue, and a beautiful sense of place, Regina Porter's debut is both an intimate family portrait and a sweeping exploration of what it means to be American today.

Praise for The Travelers

A] kaleidoscopic d but . . . Porter deftly skips back and forth through the decades, sometimes summarizing a life in a few paragraphs, sometimes spending pages on one conversation. As one character observes, 'We move in circles in this life.' --The New Yorker

Porter's electric debut is a sprawling saga that follows two interconnected American families. . . . Readers will certainly be drawn in by Porter's sharp writing and kept hooked by the black-and-white photographs interspersed throughout the book, which give faces to the evocative voices.--Booklist

Regina Porter is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and recipient of a 2017-2018 Rae Armour West Postgraduate Scholarship. She is also a 2017 Tin House Summer Workshop Scholar. Her fiction has been published in The Harvard Review. An award-winning writer with a background in playwriting, Porter has worked with Playwrights Horizons, the Joseph Papp Theater, New York Stage and Film, the Women's Project, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and Horizon Theatre Company. She has been anthologized in Plays from Woolly Mammoth by Broadway Play Services and Heinemann's Scenes for Women by Women. She has also been profiled in Southern Women Playwrights: New Essays in History and Criticism from the University of Alabama Press. Porter was born in Savannah, Georgia, and lives in Brooklyn.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780525576204
ISBN 10	0525576207
Title	The Travelers
Author	Regina Porter
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Hogarth Press
Year published	2020-09-01
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.