Ruchika Tomar - A Prayer for Travelers: A Novel

One feels the absence of mothers as much as that of a missing young woman in this scorching desert-noir.... Like her nervy protagonists, Tomar is a taker of risks, [and she] scores an A for audacity.

The New York Times Book Review

Breathtaking... The winding path of the timeline, with chapters that careen back and forth rapidly, propels the story and amplifies the suspense.... Tomar has done justice to a portrait of two young women coming of age in a world full of hard men and has created a world where the brutality of the landscape is matched by the circumstances that her characters live in.

San Francisco Chronicle

A fierce account of the violent cost of being a woman in this world, the fierceness with which women will go to save each other, and the surreal desolationboth literal and psychicof the American West.... Tomar writes with blistering precision, her portrayal of the ways in which were formed by love and trauma is sensitive, yet searing.

Nylon

Tomars book is as lethal as desert heat, but its not only hotit runs warm too, attuned to the emotions and hearts of its characters.... Tomar imbues the peculiarities and resentments and ellipses of female friendship with the power and romance and grand geography of the books landscape. In her hands, friendship becomes both legend and lore, the fable we need to travel through the world.

Hilary Leichter, The Believer

Equal parts gritty and subtly heartening, tragically jarring and emotionally resonant, its one of the strangest and most enjoyably wrought coming-of-age stories to appear in recent years. That is to say, its one hell of a ride.... Jam-packed with elements of small-town tribalism, ruinous drug use, the myth of Western masculinity, fast-paced violence, casino culture, self-harm, the power of obsession, desire, and burgeoning sexuality, film noir, and even the occasional ghost story, A Prayer for Travelers miraculously manages to maintain its deep focus on its protagonists haunted inner life and the sublime details.... An unforgettable introduction to an immense and addictive new talent with an ear for the most important sound of all: the fractured, fragile pounding of the human heart.

PopMatters

Ruchika Tomars debut novel defies categorization in the best possible ways. Its a story of friendship, a novel about place, a history of trauma, a tightly crafted mystery and so much more.

Jung Yun, Hyphen

Suspenseful [and] haunting.

Booklist

The missing-person mystery at the heart of this riveting coming-of-age novel, Tomars debut, gives it a suspenseful edginess.... As excellently drawn by Tomar, Cale and Penny are fierce survivors whose determination... pulls the reader relentlessly along. Their story makes for a dramatic and vivid tale about people chafing against the desperation of their circumstances.

Publishers Weekly

Sure to go down as one of the outstanding debuts of 2019.... A structurally audacious, suspenseful, and deeply felt story of female trauma and friendship.

Literary Hub

Tomar is a superb writer of place, whether describing the tiny desert town her characters inhabit, that sprawl of dirt and char, or the rooms in which they live... [and she] is unafraid of aesthetic and emotional difficulty.

Kirkus Reviews

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.

R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

A Prayer forTravelers 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.

Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet

Sometimes characters come along that demand a new kind of novel. The young women at the center of Ruchika Tomars A Prayer for Travelers elusive Penny and wounded Caleare two spirits hitchhiking through geographies of dislocation and desire.... The human collisions in Tomars novel are emotionally seismic, and they leave us haunted and unsettled.

Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Masters Son

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.

Elizabeth Tallent, author of Mendocino Fire

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

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Copyright 2019 by Ruchika Tomar

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Riverhead and the R colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows:

Names: Tomar, Ruchika, author.

Title: A prayer for travelers : a novel / Ruchika Tomar.

Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018050220 (print) | LCCN 2018051765 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525537038 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525537014 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593084489 (international edition)

Classification: LCC PS3620.O474 (ebook) | LCC PS3620.O474 P73 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018050220

First Riverhead hardcover edition: July 2019

First Riverhead trade paperback edition: July 2020

Riverhead trade paperback ISBN: 9780525537021

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design: Stephen Brayda

Cover image: Janniwet / iStock / Getty Images Plus

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