OUT of CAPTIVITY: Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

US: William Morrow, 2009. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. On February 13, 2003, a plane carrying three American civilian contractors- Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Tom Howes-crash-landed in the mountaino us jungle of Colombia. Dazed and shaken, they emerged from the plane bloodi ed and injured as gunfire rained down around them. As of that moment they w ere prisoners of the FARC, a Colombian terrorist and Marxist rebel organiza tion. In an instant they had become American captives in Colombia's volatil e and ongoing conflict, which has lasted for almost fifty years. In Out of Captivity, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes recount for the first t ime their amazing tale of survival, friendship, and, ultimately, rescue, tr acing their five and a half years as hostages of the FARC. Their story take s you inside one of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations, goi ng behind enemy lines with vivid and haunting imagery. Their words conjure a reality that few people have ever encountered-from sleeping on beds liter ally carved out of the jungle to escaping Colombian military air strikes un der the cover of darkness to being bound with steel chains by their captors . Describing backbreaking starvation marches and forced isolation, the auth ors chronicle their confrontations and interactions with the FARC guerrilla soldiers-a motley crew of brainwashed, idealistic teenagers and seasoned v et-erans who've been around long enough to realize that the only way out of the FARC is in a body bag. Though the physical punishments their bodies endured were unrelenting, the psychological battles they waged were the ultimate test of their resolve. With candid detail, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes relat.