June 17, 2024
The striking latest from Porter (The Travelers) revolves around a woman’s disappearance during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla Jacobson, travel to Upstate New York from their Brooklyn condo in March 2020 with plans to hole up in Darla’s mother’s summer cottage. While on a hike in the Catskills, they get into a heated argument, during which Theo reveals his Black and Indigenous heritage and Darla, who is white, accuses him of being passive aggressive. She then runs into the woods and disappears. After Theo returns to Brooklyn, he reports her disappearance to the police, then hooks up with a previous fling (he and Darla have an open marriage, and he’s only nominally concerned about her). Porter flips through several characters’ perspectives including Darla’s, detailing how she adopts the name of her friend and neighbor Ruby Black and lays low in Niagara Falls. Also featured are Darla’s worried mother, who hires a private investigator to search for her, and Ruby, who stays in Brooklyn to watch over the restaurant she owns and is livid when she learns Darla is using her name. Porter keenly explores themes of generational and racial privilege and a community’s fragile bonds. This one makes the lockdown worth revisiting. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.