08/08/2016
Journalist Anderson sets out to learn the truth about the 1985 kidnapping of her father, Terry Anderson, who was held captive for six years by the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO), an event that defined her life and impaired their relationship. She sets out to learn about the men who took her father and “how a person becomes a terrorist.” The resulting journey is a perilous and riveting spiral into Middle Eastern politics, exploring the dawn of the terrorist era in Beirut. At the center of her story is the question of Hezbollah’s complicity and the possibility of an IJO double agent dealing secretly with Israel. She speaks with U.S. counterterrorism experts Barbara Bodine and Robert Oakley, an infamous former plane hijacker, and her father’s fellow kidnappee Terry Waite, before coming face-to-face with someone uniquely qualified to answer her questions and provide the closure she so desperately seeks. Anderson intersperses her personal story, meeting her father for the first time at age seven, through a host of personal crises, and the redemptive powers she found in her chosen career. Through these dual narratives, Anderson creates a compelling depiction of the collateral damage of terrorism and a remarkable piece of investigative journalism with a surprise twist. Though we never get a full picture of her strained relationship with her father, that may be the point—there isn’t much to tell. Agent: Lindsay Edgecombe, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. (Oct.)
[A] heart-felt, moving . . . examination of a greatly changed Middle East and the groups that benefited from their hostage taking and other terrorist activities, but are far from atoning for them.
A remarkable personal story as well as penetrating insight into the adamantine world of the Middle East, where truth and politics are irreconcilable.
An excellent piece of reportage from someone who clearly has an intimate understanding of the Middle East, interwoven with an equally gripping and emotional account of one woman’s quest for reason and forgiveness. This is the story that few journalists have the bravery to write about others, let alone themselves.
Deeply personal and brutally frank . . . powerfully demonstrates that suffering need not destroy.
A gutsy coming-of-age memoir, beautifully written, and always provocative. From wounded adolescence to fearless investigative reporter, Sulome Anderson confronts her father’s kidnappers-and along the way, she shines a harsh light on the murky world of intelligence in a distraught Middle East. A poignant and astonishing mystery story.
There are times when you want to look away. This book is that personal. By telling the story of the author-and her famous family-it also traces the story of terrorism in the modern era, in gripping and intimate ways.
[Sulome’s] brutally candid, fiercely intelligent, and beautifully crafted memoir is both a fascinating introduction to the shadow world of Middle East intrigue and an inspiring story of resilience and recovery.
2016-08-02
A firsthand view of conflict in the Middle East.In 1985, Shiite militia in Lebanon kidnapped Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson and held him hostage for the next six years. It wasn’t until his release in 1991 that his daughter, the author, met him for the first time, and ever after the relationship was fraught. He suffered from PTSD and was emotionally unavailable, “numb and dismissive,” while, to judge by this memoir, his daughter was emotionally needy and made her fair share of poor decisions. Drug abuse, abusive boyfriends, mental illness: all are aspects of “the legacy of trauma I was born with.” Though the author’s point is well-taken that political acts have reverberating consequences that affect people far away from the main stage, her narrative is always less interesting when the focus is on her. Her father is another matter; though clearly flawed and wounded, he emerges as a player in a political drama of a complex, sometimes nearly incomprehensible character. Anderson is at her best when she teases apart the narrative’s many threads, which number not just Hezbollah, but also the broader community of Shiite Islam, to say nothing of Israeli intelligence, the CIA, Iran, and other actors in set pieces such as the Beirut embassy bombing. The author’s vigorous on-the-ground investigation of these matters, talking with sometimes-shadowy and seldom pleasant operatives, redeems the book from its self-absorbed excesses. The narrative is also timely; though some of the cast has changed, Anderson’s depiction of the relationship between Lebanese civilians and Syrian refugees, say, shows how enmities and alliances in the region have taken years to form. Ultimately, it’s a solid but not groundbreaking contribution to understanding the multifaceted tensions of a region that seems willfully resistant to peace. A middling book, much of it a footnote to an event that’s already well-receded into history, even though it is part of a larger conflict still unfolding.
[A] heart-felt, moving . . . examination of a greatly changed Middle East and the groups that benefited from their hostage taking and other terrorist activities, but are far from atoning for them.” — Rod Nordland, international correspondent at large, The New York Times and author of The Lovers
“Deeply personal and brutally frank . . . powerfully demonstrates that suffering need not destroy.” — Terry Waite CBE, President of Hostage UK and author of Taken on Trust
“A gutsy coming-of-age memoir, beautifully written, and always provocative. From wounded adolescence to fearless investigative reporter, Sulome Anderson confronts her father’s kidnappers-and along the way, she shines a harsh light on the murky world of intelligence in a distraught Middle East. A poignant and astonishing mystery story.” — Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames
A remarkable personal story as well as penetrating insight into the adamantine world of the Middle East, where truth and politics are irreconcilable. — Brian Keenan, former hostage and author of An Evil Cradling
“An excellent piece of reportage from someone who clearly has an intimate understanding of the Middle East, interwoven with an equally gripping and emotional account of one woman’s quest for reason and forgiveness. This is the story that few journalists have the bravery to write about others, let alone themselves.” — Reza Azlan, author of Zealot
[Sulome’s] brutally candid, fiercely intelligent, and beautifully crafted memoir is both a fascinating introduction to the shadow world of Middle East intrigue and an inspiring story of resilience and recovery.” — Stephen M. Walt, coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
“There are times when you want to look away. This book is that personal. By telling the story of the author-and her famous family-it also traces the story of terrorism in the modern era, in gripping and intimate ways.” — Brian Williams, MSNBC
“A perilous and riveting spiral into Middle Eastern politics, exploring the dawn of the terrorist era in Beirut . . . Anderson creates a compelling depiction of the collateral damage of terrorism and a remarkable piece of investigative journalism with a surprise twist.” — Publishers Weekly
“Anderson is at her best when she teases apart the narrative’s many threads, which number not just Hezbollah, but also the broader community of Shiite Islam, to say nothing of Israeli intelligence, the CIA, Iran, and other actors in set pieces such as the Beirut embassy bombing.” — Kirkus