What Fiction are you reading this week, November 17, 2019?

[farmbo]

28. "Submergence" by J. M. Ledgard (Coffee House Press 2013)

A British intelligence officer (James) serving in Somalia is captured by al-Qaeda jihadists fighters under a sadistic warlord. As he faces months of forced marches, beatings, and mock executions, he retains his sanity through recollections of his fleeting relationship with Danielle, a biomathematician and undersea explorer, who during those very months is on an a seafaring expedition to explore the lowest reaches of the Atlantic off Greenland, where she and her colleagues are studying the origins of ocean life, and the capacity of human life to survive on our warming planet.
His memory of their chance meeting two years earlier at a luxury, sea-side French hotel over a snowy Christmas holiday and their subsequent romance, will provide James with the only comfort he will ever know.