Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the French by Jessie Mendez Sayer and published October 2025

Lisa Trejman’s struggling family has eventually broken, and, as the novel begins, she is alone in France, and far from home in Argentina. Exactly how she lost custody of her children is only hinted at.

She eschews each officially approved step to achieve custody of her two young boys, but shows up outside their school, gives her lawyer a hard time, and arrives at a supervised visit eating a chocolate bar and with a knife in her purse.

The boys are being cared for by her ex-husband’s parents, who had stated they didn’t want the boys at the hearing. Lisa’s pleas, whether official or otherwise, fall on deaf ears, and she resorts to more direct methods, setting her in-laws’ farm on fire, grabbing her sleeping sons, and running. Now a fugitive, she journeys across Europe with the confused boys in the backseat.

This is a powerfully written novel. One might assume from the précis that it is a thriller, or that it is heading headlong to disaster, but it is neither of these. It’s more simple than that, just the demolition of a family, but it is because of its simplicity that it is so effective and plausible, and hence, disturbing.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5