A House in the Sky: A Memoir of a Kidnapping That Changed Everything

by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett

A House in the Sky is the dramatic and redemptive memoir of Amanda Lindhout, a woman whose curiosity led her to the world's most beautiful and remote places, its most imperiled and perilous countries, and then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity-an exquisitely written story of courage, resilience, and grace.

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, 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. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured.

Vivid and suspenseful, as artfully written as the finest novel, A House in the Sky is the searingly intimate story of an intrepid young woman and her search for compassion in the face of unimaginable adversity. For fans of the award-winning blockbuster Captain Phillips and readers of Kate McCann's Madeleine, Natasha Kampusch's 3,096 Days and Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea.

Amanda Lindhout is the founder of the Global Enrichment Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports development, aid and education initiatives in Somalia and Kenya. For more information, visit Amandalindhout.com and globalenrichmentfoundation.com

Sara Corbett is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. Her work has also appeared in National Geographic; Elle; Outside; O, the Oprah magazine; Esquire; and Mother Jones.

• ISBN10: 067092086X
• ISBN13: 9780670920860
• Publish Date: 3 April 2014 (first published 3 September 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithbecs]

I feel a bit bad about only giving this book 3 stars since it's a memoir, and because of it's topic. But that is how I feel about this book. I liked it, I'm not mad about having read it, but also wasn't amazing.
The biggest thing that makes this book a 3 star for me was the very, very slow paced beginning of the book. This is Amanda Lindhouts story about being taken captive in Somalia for 15 months. But for the first third of the book she hasn't even traveled to the country yet. Of course we need some of her back story in the beginning of the book, that's not the problem. My problem is how long that part of the book was. In my opinion that part shouldn't have been more than 50 pages. Amanda's story about her travelling around the world in 120 pages is not why I picked this book up. I wanted to know about her experience in Somalia. And that's the only reason I didn't DNF this book during the first half of the book.
When we did get to the part of the book where she traveled to Somalia and was captured was when I started to want to pick back up the book. Especially towards the end it was so hard to read this book - and not because I didn't like it, but because of all the awful things Amanda had to go trough. I feel like I should say some more about this, but I'm too speechless.