American Girls: One Woman's Journey Into the Islamic State and Her Sister's Fight to Bring Her Home

Named a Best Book of the Year by Elle

A CNN, NPR, and Today Most-Anticipated Book of 2024

A "gripping" (CNN), true account of religious extremism, radicalization, and the bonds of family: the story of an American woman who traveled to ISIS-controlled Syria with her two children and extremist husband and the sister back home who worked tirelessly to help her escape.

Raised in a restrictive Jehovah's Witness community in Arkansas, sisters Lori and Sam Sally spent their teens and twenties moving around the South and Midwest, working low-wage jobs and falling in and out of relationships. Caught in an eternal sibling rivalry--where younger, quieter Lori protected outgoing, reckless Sam--the two women eventually married a pair of brothers and settled down in Elkhart, Indiana, just around the corner from each other. It was there that their lives, once mirrors of each other's, dramatically diverged.

While Lori was ultimately able to leave her violent marriage, Sam was drawn deeper into hers--ensnared under the influence of a husband who slowly radicalized, via the internet, into a jihadist. With their daughter and Sam's child from a previous relationship, the couple moved to Raqqa, Syria, where Moussa fought for ISIS and Sam, who never even converted to Islam, attempted to survive and protect her children from airstrikes, extremist indoctrination, and the brutality of ISIS. In Raqqa, Sam's oldest son appeared in several Islamic State propaganda videos, and she participated in ISIS's practice of enslaving Yezidi women and children. Sam says her husband coerced her to move, but Lori--who quit her job and worked nonstop to get Sam out of Syria--isn't so sure.

American Girls combines an in-depth examination of Sam and Lori's lives with on-the-ground reporting from Iraq, providing a rare glimpse into the world of American women who join ISIS. Interweaving deeply reported narrative drama with expert analysis, the book explores how the subjugation and abuse experienced by women in the United States, women like Sam and Lori, are one in the same with the conditions that enable the rise of patriarchal, extremist ideologies like those espoused by ISIS.

Fascinating, "timely, and chilling" (Booklist), American Girls is an unforgettable journey--from small-town Arkansas to Raqqa, from domestic abuse to a militant terrorist organization--all told through the extraordinary story of two close, complicated sisters.


About the Author
Jessica Roy is the Digital Director of Elle magazine, where she oversees content and strategy for the website and writes and edits stories primarily about style, culture, and global issues. American Girls is based on a feature she wrote in 2019, "Two Sisters and the Terrorist Who Came Between Them." Jessica studies Arabic and reports frequently from the MENA region; she has written about women's rights in Saudi Arabia, refugee displacement in Iraq, Kurdish female fighters in Syria, and Yezidi survivors of ISIS. She is also an adjunct professor at New York University, where she teaches writing and editing for online platforms. She lives in Brooklyn.