Greg's Reviews > A House in the Sky

Impossible to put down, and easily one of the bravest, most harrowing, and most inspiring memoirs you'll ever read. What Amanda went through during her 15 months of captivity in Somalia is about as close to hell on earth as anyone could get, and her story is at once many things: a remembrance of transcended origins and of lust for travel; a page-turning, ripped-from-the-headlines chronicle of a young woman's kidnapping; a portrait of the tragedy of religious fundamentalism and failed statehood and the astonishing inhumanity that they can ignite in men (and I do mean in men--not women). But more than anything, it's an unbelievably moving account of faith in one's self, how hope can save a life when all reasons to live have been obliterated, and how forgiveness and compassion are miraculously possible after unimaginable trauma.