In 1985, Tom Sutherland, dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut (and formerly a dean at Colorado State University), was seized by Islamic Jihad terrorists. His wife, Jean, a teacher and administrator at AUB, spent six and a half years working for his release, traveling back and forth from Beirut to Washington, meeting with Bush, Reagan, George Schultz and other politicians involved in the hostage crisis. In captivity, Tom shared tiny, dank spaces with an ever-shifting roster of fellow hostages, among them Terry Anderson and Terry Waite. Tormented by his captors, he kept his sanity through meditation, reading and conversation. Told in alternating chapters by Tom and Jean, and interspersed with diary excerpts, this vivid, harrowing account of their ordeal offers a close-up of Lebanon, a cauldron of Christian, Muslim and Druze clashes, Syrian incursions, Pan-Arabism and Palestinian refugee camps. After Tom's release in 1991, the Sutherlands returned to Colorado and Tom became a professional speaker.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
From 1984 to 1991, the Islamic Jihad held hostages in Lebanon, and most of the survivors have written books about their ordeal. Although their experiences were the same, their accounts differ in their perceptions. Sutherland and his wife give a detailed description of their lives during his six-and-a-half year captivity. As a family memoir, their book resembles Ann Kerr's Come with Me from Lebanon (LJ 10/1/94). In recounting the day-to-day existence of the prisoners, it resembles Lawrence Jenco's Bound To Forgive (LJ 6/15/95). Unlike those books, however, it shows little understanding of the political realities that compelled the captors to do wrong in order to call world attention to their plight. For large general collections only.?Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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