Our latest WBS Pick! is The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr. A big thank you to Couch House Books for the ARC.

From the viewpoint of a queer guy who lives in a culture that makes him invisible in two ways, The Sleeping Car Porter vividly recreates an important period of Black history in North America. The Sleeping Car Porter is an amazing achievement because it is moving, inventive, and visceral enough to make you feel the swaying of the train.

No, Baxter is not George. But in 1929, Baxter is fortunate enough to work as a sleeper car porter on a train that travels the entire nation. He must thus simply smile, nod, and appear unnoticed when the passengers address him as George.

The passengers on this particular train out west are more rowdy than normal, especially when the train is delayed for two additional days; their secrets start to come out and blend with the hallucinations Baxter is experiencing from lack of sleep. Baxter’s recollections and longings are reawakened when he discovers a lewd postcard of two gay men; retaining it puts his employment in danger, but he is unable to let go of the image or his memories of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.

About The Author

Suzette Mayr is the author of the novels Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall, Monoceros, Moon Honey, The Widows, and Venous Hum. The Widows was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in the Canada-Caribbean region, and has been translated into German. Moon Honey was shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Best First Book and Best Novel Awards. Monoceros won the ReLit Award, the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell BookPrize, was longlisted for the 2011 Giller Prize, and shortlisted for a Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction, and the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. She and her partner live in a house in Calgary close to a park teeming with coyotes.

About Couch House Books

Pushing at the frontiers of the book with our innovative fiction, poetry, film and drama, and select non-fiction, including a series of books about Toronto. Our family of fine scriveners includes André Alexis, Christian Bök, Claudia Dey, Guy Maddin, Maggie Helwig and Darren O’Donnell, among countless others. We’ve been piling up the awards nominations: Scotiabank Giller Prizes, Griffin Poetry Prizes, Governor General’s Awards, Trillium Book Awards, Toronto Book Awards, ReLit Awards, Lambda Literary Awards, Amazon First Novel Awards, Libris Awards, the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and so on. And in 2009, we finally had the opportunity to purchase our little coach house. Home sweet House! In the last several years we’ve also celebrated our fiftieth anniversary and two Scotiabank Giller Prizes.