The Rich People Have Gone Away

A Novel

By: Regina Porter

Narrated by: William DeMeritt, Shayna Small

AN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK • 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.

“Cinematic, preternaturally humane, and absolutely unputdownable—I just loved it.”—Claire Lombardo, People “What Your Favorite Authors are Reading This Summer”

“Riveting.”—Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Time, Kirkus Reviews

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.

©2024 Regina Porter (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Porter’s story has the signposts of a mystery and the economically stratified ensemble cast of a social novel. In chapters centered on characters whose lives are disrupted by the couple’s drama and by lockdown, people sift through pasts whose cruelties match those of their pandemic present.”—The New Yorker

“An astonishing accomplishment . . . I would greedily follow this writer anywhere. . . . This is the Covid novel you didn’t know you wanted to catch.”—The Washington Post

“Terrific . . . Inherent in any discussion of privilege must also be a discussion of race, and Porter examines these inseparable ideas with expert nuance in this novel.”—Chicago Review of Books

descriptions of food

great premise and storyline that became bogged down in a torrent of adjectives, stream of consciousness and random musings of a freshmen lit major after too much red wine and weed.Tornadoes in Iowa are not hurricanes, All the characters seemed unhappy, miserable and confused about their identity. Too neat stereotypes, the bi husband open marriage the lesbian couples, rich white girl, privileged black girl, who turns on her lifelong friend because .....stupid and unrealistic but it is a novel fiction.