The Rich People Have Gone Away: A Novel by Regina Porter (Hardcover)

Fiction - Thrillers - Psychological - Literary - African American & Black 

RELEASE DATE: 8/6/2024 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

A diverse group of New Yorkers are brought together by the search for a missing woman—in this electric novel of secrets, connection, and community.

Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant.

During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect. As Darla’s and Theo’s families and friends come together to search for her, with Ruby and Katsumi stepping in to broker peace, past and present collide with startling consequences.

Set against the pulse of an ever-changing city, The Rich People Have Gone Away connects the lives of ordinary New Yorkers to tell a powerful story of hope, love, and inequity in our times—while reminding us that no one leaves the past behind completely.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Regina Porter is an award-winning playwright and author of The Travelers, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for political fiction. A graduate of the MFA fiction program at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, her writing has been published in the Harvard Review, Tin House, and the Oxford American.

"Regina Porter weaves beauty and humor with pathos, in prose that is winding, prescient, and profound. She shows us worlds inside of worlds--of queerness, of love and relationships, of who we are and who we're told to be--crafting a narrative that is both precise and thunderous. The Rich People Have Gone Away moves and transcends. We're so lucky to have it." --Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal

"A masterpiece of human portraiture that simultaneously renders quintessential depictions of the city, of America, and of the whole world in these first fraught decades of the twenty-first century." --Paul Harding, author of This Other Eden

"With its exquisitely drawn characters, scenes that jump off the page, and international locales that'll make you want to pack a bag and go, The Rich People Have Gone Away is a novel that fearlessly defies conventions. Regina Porter has crafted an inventive, hilarious, and wholly unpredictable work full of vibrant prose and genuine tenderness." --Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck

"Regina Porter's wit and astute eye for detail made me want to both underline and inhale every line in one breath. . . . An immersive examination of the human condition in the face of tragedy and triumph." --Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of The Other Black Girl

"A layer cake of suspense and a vibrantly alive portrait of several generations of New Yorkers as they fearlessly stake their anchors in the rippling sea of our era." --Kashana Cauley, author of The Survivalists

"Wildly intelligent, brilliantly crafted, prismatic, living and breathing--a remarkable feat of sensation and humanity." --Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

"A glorious jambalaya of word, thought, and feeling . . . Just when you thought you didn't need another novel set in New York, you suddenly, desperately do." --Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

"An arresting novel of race, class, food, music, and family as thrilling and dynamic as the city itself." --Andrew Ridker, author of Hope

"A delight . . . Regina Porter is a writer of such wit, warmth, and profound intelligence. Her indelible characters leap from her imagination to ours." --Margot Livesey, author of The Road from Belhaven

"A lush study of relationships, keen on the particulars of vast human catastrophes." --Raven Leilani, author of Luster