THE SAFEKEEP, by Yael van der Wouden

Join us for and online discussion of Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep, a tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house during the summer of 1961.

With her mother dead and her brothers off living their own lives, Isabel lives alone in a large, rambling house in the Dutch countryside. A solitary soul and an outsider, she feels herself inextricably linked to the house and its memories of her mother. She spends her days obsessively ordering the house, making sure everything is where it belongs.

Her tightly-controlled existence is upended when her brother Louis brings his latest girlfriend, Eva, to stay with her while he goes to work abroad. Isabel is deeply irritated—enraged even—by this invasion of her space. But as irritability turns to something else, Eva’s presence brings a whole new side of Isabel to light, in more ways than one.

Book length: 272 pages

Discussion questions