Algonquin
Published January 27, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
After a nasty argument and during a power failure, Aliya goes to bed without her wife, Sam. In the morning, feeling chagrined about the unresolved spat, Sam goes out for a run. When something in the corner of her eye distracts her, she trips over a break in the sidewalk and falls, banging her head. Aliya is likewise unhappy about their rift, and hopes they can set things right once Sam gets home from her run. But she doesn’t. Wondering if Sam is still angry, and assuming it’s too soon for the police to take a missing person report, Alyia gets on with the day, with guests coming for a fourth of July visit. By the next day, it’s clear something is very wrong, and rumors begin to swirl. A photo of Aliya laughing while at a public Independence Day celebration shared online by one of Sam’s graduate students suggests Aliya is acting suspiciously, and soon an entire media storm erupts.
While a local detective diligently investigates, we learn that Sam is being held captive by a disturbed man, tied up, drugged, and blindfolded. He has the delusion that Sam will become his loving companion. Meanwhile, social media has grown ugly, fixated on Aliya’s status as the child of Muslim immigrants. It’s halfway through Donald Trump’s first term as president and people feel newly free to be vocally racist.
Weeks later, Sam is found alive, but she’s physically wasted from her captivity and badly traumatized. Finding their way back to being a couple is complicated, and the man who kidnapped Sam is still on the loose. As they try to rebuild their lives, they begin to reconnect with their estranged families who had never fully accepted their sexuality. It’s not until a strange virus is threatening to shut down the entire world that Sam finally tracks down her assailant, almost by accident.
While there is a crime in this story, and an investigation, the focus of this novel is on relationships tested by trauma. That trauma is personal, but also national. Sam thinks to herself that she is two people, the one before her kidnapping and the one after, living in a country that is two nations at war with one another. Race, religion, and sexuality are all sites of conflict that are influencing the couple’s attempts to heal.
Those expecting a pacey crime thriller may find this novel not quite what they ordered, but as a novel about the aftermath of a crime and its effect on a marriage, it delves into the effects of crime that are too often overlooked in the more action-packed genre focused on criminals and their pursuers.