Hostage:
A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience
On September 6, 1970, I was returning home to New York from a summer in Israel when my plane was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and redirected a remote desert region of Jordan.
Passengers were held on board for six days in sweltering heat without flushable toilets or running water. Most were sent home, but I and thirty-one others were held hostage in Amman, fearing for our lives as a violent civil war erupted around us.
After my release, I returned to college a different person. Though plagued by terrifying memories, I silenced myself. One year later, striving to live in the present, I backpacked across Africa and Asia with my boyfriend and found a path forward but my buried trauma resurfaced each time a new global hostage crisis occurred.
Finally, I came to the realization that to fully heal, I needed to honestly explore how this trauma, and my silence about it, affected my life.
Hostage is the story of the first incident of international terrorism and one of the most significant events in aviation history.
An article on her hostage experience appeared in Newsweek.com.
Hostage will be published March 1, 2026 (Potomac Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press).
