Regina Porter Knihy

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. James Vincent is born in 1942 to a working class white couple whose marriage was already on the rocks. James struggles to move beyond a difficult childhood and escapes the violence at home to attend law school in Michigan, where he begins to envision his future as prosperous and bright. Meanwhile, on a rural road in Georgia, Agnes Miller, a black woman on her first date with a handsome suitor, is pulled over by the police, and the terrible moments that follow make her question whether she will have a future at all. As the years unspool ahead of them, unexpected turns of fate will connect these two lives and their families- two Americans who each come up against the forces of race, class, and gender that change - and end - ordinary lives.

Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife Darla head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their fancy apartment building has this: not Xavier, the restless teenager in the Cardi B t-shirt, or 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.