Safe Return Doubtful

Contemporary American Literature- published October 2025

Though this seems a story of amnesia that has been told many times before, Schwartz adapts her stance to address the question of when this most clears and the memory begins to return, what if the person affected really doesn’t like what emerges.

After a crash with a pizza delivery driver on his morning run in Central Park, Joe Marzano in his hospital bed, is diagnosed with retrograde amnesia.

After discharge from hospital his domestic life begins once more, what appears to be a happy family with three children in a pleasant brownstone house. But this vision of domesticity isn’t as perfect as it seems.

He soon finds out his profession was as an actor in a TV cop drama, in which he plays the lead private detective. On the surface, a wonderful career, but as the days pass this too may not be as glamorous as it seems.

Schwartz is able to pose some interesting questions, indeed this had the makings of a really good novel. My problem was that Joe, his wife and any other key characters were so unpleasant it was difficult to care about them.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5