A Prayer for Travelers
A Novel
-
-
3.8 • 5 Ratings
-
-
- $4.99
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE VCU/CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD AND LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
“[A] scorching desert-noir. . . . Like her nervy protagonists, Tomar is a taker of risks.” —New York Times Book Review
“Breathtaking . . . For Penny and Cale, violence looms at all corners and in Tomar’s compassionate rendering, they are imbued with strength, fortitude and fierceness.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Cale Lambert, a bookish loner of mysterious parentage, lives in a dusty town near the California-Nevada border, a place where coyotes scavenge for backyard dogs and long-haul truckers scavenge for pills and girls. Cale was raised by her grandfather in a loving, if codependent, household, but as soon as she's left high school his health begins an agonizing decline. Set adrift for the first time, Cale starts waitressing at the local diner, where she reconnects with Penélope Reyes, a charismatic former classmate running mysterious side-hustles to fund her dreams. Penny exposes Cale to the 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.
An audacious debut, told in deftly interwoven chapters, A Prayer for Travelers explores the complicated legacy of the American West and the trauma of female experience.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The missing-person mystery at the heart of this riveting coming-of-age novel, Tomar's debut, gives it a suspenseful edginess. When the reader is first introduced to 19-year-old diner waitress Cale Lambert, she's nursing a newly acquired shiner and searching for her friend Penny, who uncharacteristically didn't show up for work that day. That's in chapter 31 the first chapter in the book. Employing authorial sleight-of-hand, Tomar intentionally scrambles the chronology of the chapters, the better to immerse the reader in the disorder and dysfunction that shape her characters' lives. Gradually, the thread of Cale's hardscrabble life teases out: her motherless childhood growing up in her grandfather's house; her hiring at the diner where Penny works; her efforts to stay outside of Penny's occasional drug deals with the local "tweakers, potheads, and pipe-fiends"; and, finally, the incident that precipitated Penny's disappearance and Cale's entanglement with the sheriff who is searching for her. As excellently drawn by Tomar, Cale and Penny are fierce survivors whose determination to escape their dead-end town and its stultifying way of life pulls the reader relentlessly along. Their story makes for a dramatic and vivid tale about people chafing against the desperation of their circumstances.
