Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The riveting true story of two sisters' journey to the Islamic State and the father who tries to bring them home

Two Sisters , by the international bestselling author Ã...sne Seierstad, tells the unforgettable story of a family divided by faith. Sadiq and Sara, Somali immigrants raising a family in Norway, one day discover that their teenage daughters, Leila and Ayan, have vanished--and are en route to Syria to aid the Islamic State. Seierstad's riveting account traces the sisters' journey from secular, social democratic Norway to the front lines of the war in Syria, and follows Sadiq's harrowing attempt to find them.

Employing the same mastery of narrative suspense she brought to The Bookseller of Kabul and One of Us , Seierstad puts the problem of radicalization into painfully human terms, using instant messages and other primary sources to reconstruct a family's crisis from the inside. Eventually, she takes us into the hellscape of the Syrian civil war, as Sadiq risks his life in pursuit of his daughters, refusing to let them disappear into the maelstrom--even after they marry ISIS fighters. Two Sisters is a relentless thriller and a feat of reporting with profound lessons about belief, extremism, and the meaning of devotion.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Author's Note (p. vii)
• Part I
• 1 The Rupture (p. 3)
• 2 Veiled (p. 21)
• 3 Blindman's Buff (p. 39)
• 4 In (p. 46)
• Part II
• 5 Early Teens (p. 71)
• 6 The Mission (p. 79)
• 7 Eating with the Devil (p. 87)
• 8 Norway, Thine Is Our Devotion (p. 92)
• 9 This Outfit (p. 102)
• 10 It's All About the Heart (p. 107)
• 11 Valentine's Ummah (p. 118)
• 12 Target Practice (p. 128)
• 13 Halal Dating (p. 141)
• 14 Paragraphs (p. 146)
• 15 Strange Bird (p. 156)
• 16 Separation (p. 163)
• 17 Fraud in the Name of God (p. 167)
• 18 The October Revolution (p. 183)
• Part III
• 19 Danse Macabre (p. 191)
• 20 Blueprint (p. 222)
• 21 Home (p. 236)
• 22 A Kind, Wonderful Man (p. 244)
• 23 Spoils of War (p. 248)
• 24 The End of Sykes-Picot (p. 265)
• 25 God Is Not Great (p. 277)
• Part IV
• 26 Not Without My Daughters (p. 297)
• 27 New Year, New Opportunities (p. 306)
• 28 Housewives of Raqqa (p. 313)
• 29 Boys from Norway (p. 324)
• 30 Shoot the Girls If You Want! (p. 338)
• 31 Ramadan (p. 357)
• Part V
• 32 A Different Life (p. 367)
• 33 Voices in the Mind (p. 377)
• 34 Legacy (p. 387)
• The Basis of the Book (p. 401)
• Glossary (p. 413)
• References (p. 417)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

On October 17, 2013, the unthinkable happened to Sadiq and Sara, Somali immigrants raising a family in Norway. Their two teenage daughters, Ayan and Leila, disappeared, leaving an email stating their intentions to travel to Syria to aid in jihad. To find out why they would reject family, friendships, and country to face violence, death, and oppression as members of a terror organization, Seierstad (One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway-and Its Aftermath) reconstructed the events leading up to the sisters' decision and the family's attempts to bring them home by piecing together interviews, emails, instant messages, and text messages. Through technology, the family tried desperately to keep the girls tethered to their former life, even after they married Islamic State fighters, so they wouldn't vanish entirely. On the news we hear about radicalized youth and fear that it will lead to new terrorist attacks-this book takes that to a more personal level with the unresolvable pain and grief it can cause a family. VERDICT An important story that will leave readers considering the effects of xenophobia, youth culture, social media, and radicalization. [See Prepub Alert, 8/28/17.]-Heidi Uphoff, Sandia National Laboratories, NM © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Journalist Seierstad (One of Us) tells a harrowing tale that began in October 2013, when two teenage Norwegian-Somali girls, Ayan and Leila, fled their comfortable life in Norway for the Islamic State in Syria. Their bewildered father, Sadiq Juma, set off to retrieve them, thwarted first by his imprisonment by ISIS and later by a botched kidnapping attempt that resulted only in extracting a stranger. Along the way, Seierstad reveals not only the destruction that competing armies have leveled in Syria, but also the chilling process of the sisters' radicalization, tracing their exposure to the fundamentalist group Islam Net. Seierstad also accords her large cast of characters the dignity of being treated in depth, detailing the sisters' lives back in Norway, as well as those of their friends, also from Somali backgrounds, who followed very different paths, and revealing Sadiq's flaws along with his courage. The book is more gripping narrative than cultural study, especially in the dramatic scenes of Sadiq's imprisonment. Seierstad's scrupulous reporting shines a revealing new light on the phenomenon of young Westerners becoming fervent supporters of terror. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Book Review

In which the sins of the children are visited upon the fathers: an unblinking journalistic account of the life of the jihadi."You did not suddenly wake up one day a fanatic," writes Norwegian journalist Seierstad (One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway, 2015, etc.) toward the end of this insightful but somewhat overlong story of immigrant dreams betrayed. "It was a direction you grew in." Sadiq had come to Norway with his wife from Somalia and there, by hard work and no small travail, had raised two daughters and a son. In late adolescence, having slipped into a gradual fundamentalist outlook, the two daughters vanished only to announce, both defiantly and apologetically, that they were off to battle the infidels on the battlefields of Syria. Their journey led them into a hornet's nest of Islamic State terrorists from every corner of the Muslim world arrayed against a Russian-backed dictatorship; there they plunged ever further into the violent jihadi cause. As the daughters, never quite silent or out of sight, became more religious, the son became more militant in rejecting Islam; part of the value of Seierstad's informative account is to witness the back-and-forth emails among them: "Godis such a self-obsessed asshole that he wants the people he created' to pray to him five times a day and for those who don't believe in him to be killed," writes the son, to which the daughter replies, "instead of talking crap and being offensive try finding the truth or shut up and respect other people's choices." Meanwhile, even as his family was falling apart, Sadiq tried to remove his daughters from Syriano easy matter when they didn't want to leave, standing by their choice to submit to IS."Is it ethically defensible to focus on the lives of two girls when they have not granted their consent?" Seierstad wonders at the end. That is for readers to decide, now knowing much more about what drives people to fanatical causes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.