The Rich People Have Gone Away by Regina Porter

This is a startling unique story, set in the time of COVID lock down. That is the back drop, the underlying structure, which requires you in overt and subtle ways to both remember what it was like, and grapple with how something like this might have happened more easily because of what was happening. The story is populated by a number of characters, many of them pretty unlikable. The first is Theo, an interior decorator, who is an open marriage, a fancy term for a serial cheater. His pregnant wife, Darla, is a professional bassoon player rendered unemployed when covid shuts down the Great White Way. In these early days of the lockdown, she’s been keeping herself busy by making her own masks and sanitizing the apartment with eco-friendly cleansers. Weary of the stress of city life, these two expectant parents leave Brooklyn for some respite at the family’s summer cottage in the Catskills. During a hike in the woods, Theo is being particularly obnoxious and then tells Darla that his great grandfather was black and maybe their child would be too. It is like throwing gasoline on a fire, and Theo and Darla part, she to continue to hike and he to go home. The twist is that Darla takes off. She disappears and when it goes on for days, Theo comes under suspicion. A woman hunt ensues, and the story ricochets between a host of characters with the central themes of how race and class complicate the great variety of human experiences evolves into a story well told.