We Have Taken Your Husband

Mexican kidnappers leave a terrified New Yorker to figure out how to get man back — if she really wants him back.

Stylish and successful New Yorkers — she a retired TV newscaster; he the heir to rambling riverfront estate in the Hudson Valley — attempt an early retirement in a quaint village high in the Mexican sierra.

It’s a tempestuous but dynamic marriage in part because of their mutual commitment to sexual freedom and to the exploration of Mexican culture — and Mexicans — in every way they can.

Their world is upended by s icarios , ambitious members of a criminal cartel who smell money and, on his walk home from an evening AA meeting, seize Schuyler Schermerhorn and hold him for ransom.

Raising the ransom — but how much? the sicarios at first refuse to say — leads Ariana Altobelli on a path of sometimes startling discoveries, both about the expat community in which she lives and about the family of the man held captive. The biggest discovery will be about herself. Does she truly want her husband back, or has she been unwittingly complicit in his abduction?  

“A quietly nerve-wracking thriller set against a richly detailed tapestry of the expat life that is luring so many Americans to Mexico these days.”