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‘His true genius lies in the universality of his observations’: Reflections on James Baldwin’s legacy

The Travelers

An astonishing debut novel that bears witness to the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and the first term of Obama's presidency, The Travelers is both an intimate family portrait and a searing examination of America today.

'Regina Porter's sprawling, sparkling debut novel... is an exhilarating ride. Porter is a wickedly astute chronicler of human foibles.' Guardian 
 
As America recovers from the Second World War, two families' journeys begin. 
 
James Vincent, born in 1942 to an Irish-American family, escapes his parents' turbulent marriage and attends law school in New York, where he moves up the social ladder as a prosperous and bright attorney. 
Meanwhile, Agnes Miller, a beautiful black woman on date with a handsome suitor, is pulled over by the police on a rural road in Georgia. The terrible moments that follow make her question her future and pivot her into a hasty marriage and new life in the Bronx. 
 
Illuminating more than six decades of sweeping change - from the struggle for civil rights and the chaos of Vietnam to Obama's first year as President - James and Agnes's families will come together in unexpected, intimate and profoundly human ways. 
 
'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...' Entertainment Weekly 
 
*LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020*

The Travelers is a rare debut that heralds what should be a long and promising career.

Regina Porter’s sprawling, sparkling debut novel… is an exhilarating ride. Porter is a wickedly astute chronicler of human foibles. In her hands, this series of glimpses feels something like life itself.

Spanning six decades and three continents…[The Travelers] is held together by an elegant web of connections… Porter has a striking habit of telescoping time to chart individual trajectories… The often breathtaking immediacy and assurance of Porter’s prose carries you through.

If you’re looking for a poetic, spare, sometimes funny tale of ordinary people pining for meaningful connections — or if you’re someone who wishes Raymond Carver had published a novel — you have arrived.

This kaleidoscopic debut novel... 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."

[A] remarkable debut novel... There is a confidence to Porter's writing that makes it hard to believe that this is her first novel... The Travelers succeeds because Porter is so clear-eyed when documenting human interactions, the mass of particularities amounting to a gloriously and depressingly messy picture of life in America.

American history comes to vivid, engaging life in this tale of two interconnected families (one white, one black)… the complex, beautifully drawn characters are unique and indelible.

A sprawling, ambitious debut ... Beautifully written and intricately plotted.

An absolute wonder of a novel. A sweeping examination of race and class within America's troubled history. A love letter to fearless women laced with a sharp humour. I'm thrilled by the magnitude, ingenuity and heart of Regina Porter's daring vision.

In this innovative and deeply moving debut, Regina Porter has mastered the kind of alchemy found in a great painting by Poussin: her canvas is vast, her subject ambitious, and yet her execution is so brilliantly devoted to particulars that it creates a miraculous intimacy. The beauty of this book lies in how Porter's characters, through resilience and community, art and creative love, cut new doors out of the corners they've been backed into by history.

Thrillingly ambitious, deeply affecting ... There is so much offered here – race, history, love, loss, and family, just to name a few – that this debut novel should be considered nothing less than a supreme act of generosity.

The Travelers is a great, grand tabernacle of a novel, under the roof of which it seems the entire history of the United States and all its people has been gathered into a single blazing congregation. It is full of tales tall and short, lives black, white, and every shade between, from the north, the south, east, and west. None but the biggest-hearted, sharpest-eyed, most generous-spirited of writers could pull off a book like this. Regina Porter is some kind of visionary.

Regina Porter’s The Travelers is not only the compelling intergenerational saga of two intertwining families but also a deadpan and mordant chronicle of 20th-century America’s casual intolerance and racial violence, as well as a series of portraits of intrepid women, a celebration of family responsibility, and an impassioned reminder that we most honor those we loved by continuing to love others.

Jim Shepard, National Book Award shortlisted author of Like You’d Understand, Anyway

In The Travelers, generations of two families – one black and one white – journey across time, race, geography and the wounds of history with sweeping breadth and disarming intimacy. Porter's debut signals the arrival of a fully formed, singular talent. You've been wanting to read this book for a long time; it's just that Porter hadn't written it yet.

When the boy was four, he asked his father why people needed sleep. His father said, ‘So God could unfuck all the things people fuck up.’ 
 
*LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020* 
 
As America recovers from the Second World War, two families’ journeys begin. James Vincent, born in 1942 to an Irish-American family, escapes his parents’ turbulent marriage and attends law school in New York, where he moves up the social ladder as a prosperous and bright attorney. Meanwhile, Agnes Miller, a beautiful black woman on date with a handsome suitor, is pulled over by the police on a rural road in Georgia. The terrible moments that follow make her question her future and pivot her into a hasty marriage and new life in the Bronx. 
 
Illuminating more than six decades of sweeping change – from the struggle for civil rights and the chaos of Vietnam to Obama’s first year as President – James and Agnes’s families will come together in unexpected, intimate and profoundly human ways. 
 
'Regina Porter’s sprawling, sparkling debut novel… is an exhilarating ride. Porter is a wickedly astute chronicler of human foibles. In her hands, this series of glimpses feels something like life itself.' Guardian

Regina Porter

Ordinary New Yorkers are brought together in a story of betrayal, race, what connects us to each other – and what sets us apart 
 
***A ROXANE GAY BOOK CLUB 2024 SELECTION*** 
 
'A marvel... A masterpiece' PAUL HARDING 
 
'Prescient and profound' BRYAN WASHINGTON 
 
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his blonde, blue-eyed, pregnant wife Darla head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their fancy apartment building has this privilege: not Xavier, the restless teenager in the Cardi B t-shirt, nor Darla’s black best friend Ruby and her partner Katsumi, who stay behind to save their restaurant. 
 
During an upstate hike, Theo lets slip a long-held secret about his mixed-up ancestry – and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect at the centre of a front-page police search for the perfect missing woman. 
 
'A lush study' RAVEN LEILANI 
 
'Riveting and original' CHARMAINE WILKERSON

Regina Porter

The Rich People Have Gone Away

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