Publication Date: October 27, 2026
A case of missing noble women and a determined young warrior who sets out to bring them home in this new and exciting ancient historical set just before the founding of Rome, for fans of The Song of Achilles, Circe, and A Thousand Ships.
Safinia is fine to focus on her training as a warrior, providing for her sisters, and minding her own business. She feels no great need to meddle in anyone else’s, until women in her town, including her former lover, begin disappearing. Quietly, at first, but disappearing just the same. All of the missing women have vanished from powerful households, but their formidable fathers are in utter denial, claiming their daughters are off on trips, sure to be back shortly, with perfectly reasonable explanations for their absences.
Dissatisfied with the half-hearted attempts to hand wave away the alarming and mysterious cases of the vanishing women, Safinia takes matters into her own hands, embarking on a journey to a neighboring village in search of answers or at the very least clues that might unearth threads she can begin to pull at. Along the way, she meets an unlikely yet helpful search partner, a historian who calls himself Livy. But despite his eerie sense of knowledge, Safinia is unable to uncover to missing women, thwarted more often than not by the girls’ fathers themselves. As war with Rome looms on the horizon, Safinia must face the reality that the only one she can trust to bring them home is herself.
Alysandra Dutton has crafted an expertly researched and indepth look at the Sabine women, one of history’s most overlooked yet crucial stories that has inspired countless works of art throughout the centuries. It’s a fresh, page-turning adventure, perfect for readers of Madeline Miller and Natalie Haynes.
In a feminist retelling of mythology, a female warrior of the Sabine clan investigates the disappearance of young women in her village, including her former lover, which will test every ounce of her strength and will in Alysandra Dutton’s mesmerizing debut, The Stolen Women.
In the village of Cures Sabinum in 753 BC, Safinia hunts by day to help feed her two sisters, Attice and Anesia, as they struggle to survive on the outskirts of town. Daughter of the renowned and fearsome warrior, Calliste, Safinia is considered the “patriarch” of the family after their parents died in battle. Life is harsh and brutal, and the seventeen-year-old Safinia has seen more than her fair share of violence—especially after killing two raiders who abducted and raped her sister, Attice. Haunted by her sister’s suffering, Safinia is doubly disturbed to learn that young women in Sabinum have disappeared, with rumors that the fledgling town of Rome has taken them. Among them is Hersilia, a high-born daughter of Numa, the king’s counsel—and her heart’s one, true desire.
When Orestilla, Hersilia’s illegitimate half-sister, seeks out Safinia for help, the quest becomes larger than just Hersilia and Safinia—it is to find all the missing girls, but also to stop Romulus, Rome’s newest leader, from his nefarious plans to subsume Sabinum and the other villages into Romulus’s design for a wider empire. When Safinia sets off to find clues to Hersilia’s whereabouts, she is joined by a curious and infuriating man known as Livy—a historian who purports to see the future.
In Dutton’s deft hands, the myth of the Rape of the Sabine Women comes to vivid, heartbreaking life. The novel is a visceral gut punch that reclaims the women at the center of the story and reorients feminine agency and strength around the Sabine women. As Safinia follows the breadcrumbs of clues that lead her closer to Hersilia, she allows Orestilla to join her and her sisters’ hearth. Through Orestilla, Safinia learns more about Hersilia in the four years since they parted on bad terms; she also finds herself drawn to Orestilla’s warm heart and kind glances.
The story reads like an ancient mystery, and Safinia and Livy make a humorous pair, dodging authorities and skulking about darkened palaces searching for clues. The inclusion of Livy is an intriguing choice by Dutton, since Livy would later write the history of Rome well after it achieved empire. Best not to spoil the fun of discovering who Livy is to Safinia and how she fits into his plans, as well.
The strength of this story, beyond its artful construction and transfixing prose, is the elevation of history’s silent ones: the women who so often were either written out of it or served as mere adornments and prizes on the arms of violent men. Safinia is a hero beyond Romulus, even beyond Livy…she is the warrior who will drive her mind and body to devastation to protect the women in her care. Just when Safinia is within reach, however, a stomach-churning discovery rocks her understanding of everything she has known. Will Safinia be able to stop Romulus’s plan to abduct the Sabine women for brides before war breaks out? Or will war be the only rational choice?
Dutton tucks big questions and themes under the action and clever dialogue. By foregrounding women’s experiences, she questions the assumption that established historical narratives necessarily provide a complete or neutral account of the past. Dutton challenges readers to see the women as people, with personal desires, dreams, and hopes for a peaceful life. This perspective challenges the tendency to romanticize the origins of powerful states without confronting the human costs of their expansion.
With an unforgettable conclusion that lingers long after the last page, The Stolen Women stands head-and-shoulders above the recent proliferation of ancient retellings.
Alysandra Dutton attended the University of Arkansas for her MFA, where she was awarded a dizzying number of fellowships and prose awards. Her short fiction appeared in Catapult, Electric Literature and The Sun, and she wrote The Stolen Women with support from The Elizabeth George Foundation. Currently, she lives in Minnesota and is a teaching artist with The Loft Literary Center, where she leads regular historical fiction workshops and neurodivergent writing groups, Interlochen Arts Camp, and the ALS Association.
