Skip to content
Responsive image
Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Weblink
www.ruchikatomar.com/

A PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS

Ruchika Tomar

This daring debut novel propels readers into the world of Penny and Cale, two marginalized young women who forge an intense bond against a constricting backdrop of violence and isolation in Nevada's northern desert.
Cale, a bookish loner of mysterious parentage, was abandoned by her mother and raised by her grandfather in a loving, if codependent, household. One pivotal summer her life is upended by the discovery of a devastating secret that irrevocably threatens this formative relationship.

Set adrift for the first time in her life, Cale begins waitressing at the local diner, where she reconnects with Penélope Reyes, a charismatic former classmate and all-around hustler. Penny exposes Cale to the complicated reality that exists beyond their small town, and the girls become inseparable until one terrifying act of violence shatters their world. When Penny vanishes without a trace, Cale must set off on a dangerous quest across the desert to find her friend, and discover herself. Told in short, interconnecting chapters, the novel explores the complicated legacy of the American West and the trauma of female experience.

A PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS draws upon Ruchika's own experiences growing up in a diverse inland community in southern California. She received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction, The MacDowell Colony and Vermont Studio Center. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, she is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.
Available products
Book

Published 2019-07-09 by Riverhead

Book

Published 2019-07-09 by Riverhead

Comments

[A] scorching desert-noir. . . . Like her nervy protagonists, Tomar is a taker of risks.

Whoever you are, wherever you are reading these words, I wish I could take you (gently) by the lapels, look in your eyes, and say, Read this, it will awe you. Ruchika Tomar is a superb recognizer of the subtle and the elusive, of the exigencies of love and trauma. A PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS is one of the wild books that somehow shook itself free of the usual constraints so it could go for its own deep life, a forceful, strange, indelible book I am never going to get over."

Sometimes characters come along that demand a new kind of novel. The young women at the center of Ruchika Tomar's A PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS- elusive Penny and wounded Cale - are two spirits hitchhiking through geographies of dislocation and desire. Some chapters trot past, stealthy as high-desert coyotes, while others brushfire themselves into your mind. Moods form, visions sear, an uneasy ache prevails. The human collisions in Tomar's novel are emotionally seismic, and they leave us haunted and unsettled.

A literary page-turner of the highest order.

A PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS is a novel haunted by missing persons and lost souls, written in telepathic prose. Ruchika Tomar sees through walls, around corners, and into the deep heart of what matters, and moves us, the most. A beautiful debut.

A Prayer for Travelers by Ruchika Tomar is a remarkable piece of writing, astute in style and structure and also in the story that it tells.

A debut with everything.

A tension-filled novel of trauma and survival.

Breathtaking . . . For Penny and Cale, violence looms at all corners and in Tomar's compassionate rendering, they are imbued with strength, fortitude and fierceness.

A fierce account of the violent cost of being a woman in this world . . . Tomar writes with blistering precision, [and] her portrayal of the ways in which we're formed by love and trauma is sensitive, yet searing.

I've long believed that there isn't enough fiction about friendships being published these days. Which means, of course, that there's an even shorter supply of books about friendships among women and girls. Fortunately Ruchika Tomar's debut novel, A Prayer for Travelers, is one such book.

Ruchika Tomar is an ace cartographer of the heart and its urgent, wild, unruly ways. Radiant with longing, A Prayer for Travelers is an unforgettable debut.

Shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award Judges: R.O. Kwon, Terese Marie Mailhot, David L. Ulin Read more...