The Book of the Month: A House in the Sky

This book is about how a young girl’s dream of travelling the world to escape the bleakness of her home life became her worst nightmare. A true story of how a strive for freedom became a sentence to captivity.

Amanda Lindhout is a young woman from Calgary who works in trendy bars and restaurants during the Canadian winters to pay for her long trips  around the globe. She travels on tight budgets and prefers interesting destinations to the touristic ones. Places where only young, tenacious and resourceful people decide to adventure to. Her long-chased dream of being paid (even if not much) to do what she likes best - i.e. travelling, takes her to war-devastated zones such as Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and, eventually, Somalia. Within 2 days of being in Mogadishu (as she defines it: "one of the most dangerous places on earth"), she and freelance journalist and her former lover, Nigel Brennan, are kidnapped by a group of Muslim fighters and held in captivity for ransom. Their abduction will last for fifteen months during which Amanda will be brutally abused, both mentally and physically. Their captivity will end only after a $1,5 milion is paid out by Nigel and Amanda’s families to their kidnappers. Yet, in her honest recounting of her chronicles, Amanda never lets hate get hold of her heart and mind. Her endurance, hope and compassion are stronger than any terrible adversity. This beautifully recounted story is as unbelievable as it is brutally real.