The Safekeep Book Discussion

Please join us at Travel Bug to chat about The Safekeep.

Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize • Winner of the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction • 2025 Dylan Thomas Prize and Aspen Words Literary Prize

Set in the Netherlands after the war, The Safekeep is a compelling tale of obsession and secrets, exploring the stories that are kept from us as children, and the stories that we tell to ourselves about our own hidden desires. Fifteen years from the end of the Second World War and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the conflict is well and truly over. Isabel lives alone in her late mother's country home, and her life is led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep as a guest, there to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel's antithesis: she sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn't. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house her suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate desire for order transforms into infatuation – leading to a discovery that unravels all she has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house – are what they seem.

Meet in Travel Bug 839 Paseo de Peralta 505-992-0418
Enjoy a glass of wine or beer on us!

The Travel Bug Book Group is hosted my Aimee Gwynne Franklyn, an independent curator, art consultant and producer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.