How do we end up in our environments? And once we’re there, is it possible to reverse course? In her debut book,American Girls: One Woman’s Journey Into the Islamic State and Her Sister’s Fight to Bring Her Home, Jessica Roy, the former digital director of ELLE.com, seeks to answer these questions through the story of sisters Lori and Sam—tracing their respective journeys, from growing up in a Jehovah’s Witness community in the Midwest to, in Sam’s case, traveling to ISIS-controlled Syria with her husband and children. Expanding upon the article Roy wrote for ELLE in 2019, titled “Two Sisters and the Terrorist Who Came Between Them,” the new book uses incisive, on-the-ground reporting to explore how, even through experiences with abusive partners, poverty, and religious extremism, it’s the bond of sisterhood that is perhaps the most complicated of all.
