The Sleeping Car Porter

Based on the provided content: "When a Mudslide Strands a Train" is a 2022 literary fiction book that follows Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, on a trip across the country in 1929. Baxter must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair while pretending to be George, the name they call him. The passengers' secrets and hallucinations cause chaos on the train, and Baxter must decide whether to keep a naughty postcard that reawakens his memories of Edwin Drew or risk his job.

Format: Hardback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 18 May 2023
Publisher: Dialogue

Winner of the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize


Publishers Weekly Top 20 Literary Fiction Books of 2022


Oprah Daily: Books to Read by the Fire?


When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair.


Baxter's name isn't George. But it's 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he'll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with George.


On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two queer men, Baxter's memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can't part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.

Weight: 340g
Dimension: 144 x 225 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780349703909