As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress in Calgary, Alberta, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road.
Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives “wife lessons” from one of her captors, and risks a daring escape. Moved between a series of abandoned houses in the desert, she survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured.
Another memoir by another young, idealistic girl who discovers that she is not invisible. Another story carved out from traveling innocently to another dangerous country, this time Somalia. I bypass these memoirs sometimes because it seems like it's the same type of story, just different person. This book has gotten great reviews, a lot of coverage and I did read an excerpt of the Prologue. I thought the writing was excellent and absorbing. The story seemed fresh. And so, this memoir, just published in September by Scribner is on my TBR list. The writing will make this one stand out. Here is the EXCERPT if you'd like to read it. And here are the links for the Hardcover and the Kindle Edition .
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