Ali and Sam were two unlikely women who got married after grad school. Sam, short for Samantha, was an aspiring novelist who taught college writing classes, while her wife, Ali, short for Aliya, was a high-end interior decorator, born in Ohio, daughter of Muslim immigrants with family in India. While they loved each other unreservedly, they still got into spats, which often reflected their respective upbringings. Sam was the only daughter of a physically abusive father, who made his wife's life a living hell, and hers also, until she fought back as a teenager. Ali came from a culture where behavior was monitored by the family and community, and she rebelled by doing and behaving as she wanted including flirtatious behavior with their friends, which made Sam furious.
After one such particularly nasty fight, they slept in separate bedrooms. In the morning, Sam was very contrite about last night's behavior and failed to wake Ali for their morning run to let her sleep a little later. Preoccupied with their fight, she became distracted and tripped on a broken piece of sidewalk, hitting her head and falling to the pavement. She didn't return home.
Ali, trying to give Sam space, went out with friends to a July 4th concert with her houseguests, and didn't call the police until the next day. She was frantic with worry, especially when she started believing that Sam was so angry that she left her. One of Sam's students took it upon herself to make a social media posting about Sam's disappearance, all but blaming Ali, and it went viral. Soon newspapers were also covering the story blowing it all out of proportion and speculating on what happened. Things were getting out of control and still, Sam had not returned.
The next part of the book delves into what happened to Sam during the six weeks that she was gone, and its aftermath.
I am not going to ruin the book for you and any more information would do just that. Suffice to say, Thrity Umrigar wrote it and that should be enough of a recommendation. It is a beautifully told love story, but it is also extremely suspenseful, and it gives the reader a window into how women deal with circumstances they can't control and how it is possible to exert control in other ways. Read it.
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