The New Naturals

Critically acclaimed, for readers of Paul Beatty's The Sellout and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, a moving and darkly funny novel about an attempt to found an underground Utopia. An abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts doesn't look like much. But to Rio, a young Black woman bereft after the loss of her newborn child, this hill becomes more than a safe haven—it becomes a place to start over. She convinces her husband to help her construct a society underground, somewhere everyone can feel safe, loved, and accepted. Soon their utopia begins to take shape and attracts the unhoused, the disillusioned, and the spiritually lost. But no matter how much these people all yearn for a sanctuary from the existential dread of life above the surface, what happens if this new society can't actually work? From an exciting new literary voice, The New Naturals is fresh and deeply perceptive, capturing the absurdity of life in the 21st century. In this remarkable feat of imagination, Bump shows us that, ultimately, it is our love for and connection to each other that will save us. **A 2023 NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST Notable Book and a BOSTON GLOBE Best Book of the Year** In a disarmingly original and perceptive novel, Gabriel Bump peels back the layers of lives lived all over the country today and asks, what if there was a a safe place for Black people, a kind of contemporary Quilombo? A remarkable feat of the imagination, The New Naturals is a fresh and timely story about the importance of community, for although their utopia cannot survive, the ties that bind these people to each other do. Bump shows us that, ultimately, it is our love for and connection to each other that will save us.