Brooklyn journalist to publish ‘The Hostage’s Daughter: A Memoir of Family, Madness, and the Middle East’
Brooklyn BookBeat: Launch Event Slated for Oct. 4 at Brooklyn Brewery
The world has grown accustomed to the kidnapping of western journalists by militant groups, but when Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson was abducted by Shiite Muslims in Beirut in 1985 and held captive for 6 1/2 years, Americans were riveted by the story. Terry’s daughter, Sulome, born after he was taken hostage, did not meet her father until his 1991 release. The press painted a rosy picture of the homecoming — the image of the just-released hostage with his arm around a little girl in a red coat is one of the indelible news photos of the era.
Then the journalists and the cameras went away, and Sulome’s family tried to begin a normal life, but it was no fairytale ending. Terry’s PTSD plagued the household, destroying her parents’ marriage and leaving her with intractable psychological scars that would lead to long struggles with drug addiction and mental illness.
In “The Hostage’s Daughter: A Memoir of Family, Madness, and the Middle East” (Dey Street Books; on sale Oct. 4), Brooklynite Sulome Anderson blends her own story with reportage and analysis to explore the aftereffects of terrorism and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. (An excerpt from the book can be read at Vice.com.)