[1] Set in the 1920s, the novel centres on Baxter, a Black Canadian and closeted gay immigrant from the Caribbean who is working as a railway porter to save money to fund his dream of getting educated as a dentist.

"[7] Reviewing The Sleeping Car Porter in Alberta Views, H. Nigel Thomas described the book as "a brilliantly multilayered novel, written for the most part in pictorial language and rich in its observations of the human condition.

"[8] Writing in the Literary Review of Canada, Marlo Alexandra Burks said that while Mayr's narration is "lively and pliant", she questioned some of the book's plot devices.

She felt it is never fully explained why Baxter, "a young, queer, Black man 'born in the tropics' and known for his penchant for 'scientifiction' and his talent for seeing what he shouldn't", wants to be a dentist.

Burks remarked that The Sleeping Car Porter reminds her of Gerhart Hauptmann’s 1888 novella, Lineman Thiel in which a railway worker also "struggles with fatigue, temporal confusion, and disturbing visions".