The Friend of the Family

By: Dean Koontz

Narrated by: Rachel L. Jacobs

In this historical novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz, a girl liberated from a carnival sideshow discovers her mysterious purpose in a moving story about family, sacrifice, and transcendent love.

The human “oddities” in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised. But Alida is something else. The real thing. Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely life on the road as the museum’s golden ticket. Until she’s rescued by two compassionate strangers.

Franklin and Loretta Fairchild see in Alida a gifted and uncannily well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. With the openhearted couple and their three precociously imaginative children, Alida finds it. Yet despite everyone’s overwhelming generosity and acceptance, Alida knows she is still a very different kind of girl. Her dreams bear that out. They’re vivid, unsettling, and threatening. Alida fears that they’re also warnings. And that it’s the Fairchilds who may need rescue from a bad, bad world.

Alida will do anything to help those she now holds nearest and dearest. Empowered with a purpose to vanquish evil, she will not fail her family.

©2026 by Dean Ray Koontz and Gerda Ann Koontz, as Trustees of the Koontz Living Trust dated July 11, 1994. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

So beautiful

It took me a while to recognize this was actually by my favorite author. No horror except the horrible way humans treat someone who is different.
It evolved into such a beautifully brilliant story. He had to have sobbed as he wrote the end. It was glorious. Thank you.

Captivating Story with lots of intense moments.

The book uses your imagination to visualize characters as the story is spun through history!

Good book, middle requires you to pay attention to follow

The only thing I didn’t quite care for was what seemed like the back and forth of time periods but the book as a whole I really enjoyed. The ending wasn’t at all what I expected but it brought me right back to a book I read (35+ years ago) in my childhood Watermusic by S. Sargent. This Dean Koontz book was a wonderful read.

Surprising Joy

I wasn’t a fan of the telling and the setting. But I kept with it. I am so glad. I sit here in tears at the end. This was a surprise.

The best Dean Koontz book in a LONG TIME!

The best Dean Koontz book in a LONG TIME!

Good story, good performance and a typical DK plot twist...