A house in the sky
Subtitle: a memoir
By: Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett
Contributors: Corbett, Sara, author
Edition: Large print edition.
Series: Thorndike Press large print nonfiction; Thorndike Press large print nonfiction series
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 653
ISBN-13: 9781410463791
Subjects: Large type books; Biography; Journalists; Hostages; History
Description: 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. Kept in chains, starved and abused, she survives by imagining herself in a "house in the sky," finding strength and hope in the power of her own mind.