The Good Deed

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"Hilma, an American painter of fifty-eight, goes to the beautiful island of Samos to escape a family tragedy by swimming and hiking and trying to forget. But on one of these swims, she finds a small Syrian girl floating unconscious in a life jacket. Hilma saves her but quickly becomes obsessed with the idea of adopting the girl, whose mother and father, she assumes, have drowned, as so many refugees do. The child's mother, Farah, did not drown, however, but has turned up in the refugee camp on the island, frantically worried about what became of her child after their boat sank in the sea. Waiting for her on the island are her mother, Leila; her two little brothers; and Leila's friends, Amina and Nafisa, each of whom has their own backstory that weaves through the tale. As the novel evolves through the women's daily lives at the camp and their backstories in Syria and Sudan, Hilma's increasing obsession with the child pitches her into direct conflict with Farah and her family. Eventually, it becomes clear that Hilma is obsessed because she accidently killed her own granddaughter, which blinds her to the fact that she is trying to steal a child from the very people she thinks she wants to help. The book's climax comes in the final scenes in the courtroom, when the judge, Solomon-like, must decide who is the real mother and to whom the child will go"--