On Friday April 9th 2004 Thomas Hamill was kidnapped by Iraqi fighters and on Sunday May 2nd 2004, 24 days later he escaped and was rescued by a military patrol. This gripping book is the story of how Thomas Hamill found himself in Iraq, how he survived his captivity, how his family survived the pressure of his absence. Thomas Hamill was not a solider, nor did he have any special training. The reason he was in Iraq was the most basic one imaginable, he need the money that that he could earn there as a civilian contractor to support his family back in America. In America Thomas Hamill had to drive trucks long distance to support his farm and family and the struggle to make ends meet was just getting harder all the time. Iraq represented a great chance to accumulate some money to get a little ahead and take pressure off his family.
His convoy was attacked and he was injured and taken prisoner. I think it was the fact that he was not a solider that was a contributing factor to his survival, he was just a regular working man much like the people he met. The differences were balanced by strong similarities and they achieved a sort of rapport that allowed him to survive. His descrptions of the kindness he was shown, the small interactions he had with his captors are very moving. He was never sure if he would be killed, he kept his spirit enough to finally sieze his chance to escape.
For a non-American reader like myself, the deep and strongly expressed religious faith that Thomas Hamill expresses all the time is very striking. This book is a great reminder that we humans really are extraordinary beings.
