Sulome Anderson

THE HOSTAGE’S DAUGHTER: A Memoir of Family, Madness, and the Middle East (Dey Street Books; on sale October 4, 2016; $25.99) is the gripping blend of reportage, memoir, and analysis by a journalist and daughter of one of the world’s most famous hostages, TERRY ANDERSON. Daughter SULOME ANDERSON takes an intimate look at her father’s captivity during the Lebanese Hostage Crisis and the ensuing political firestorm on both her family and the United States—as well as the far-reaching implications of those events on Middle Eastern politics today! In 1991, 6 year old Sulome Anderson met her father, Terry, for the first time. While working as the Middle East bureau chief for the ASSOCIATED PRESS covering the long and bloody civil war in Lebanon, Terry had been kidnapped in Beirut and held for more than 6 years by a Shiite Muslim militia associated with the Hezbollah movement. As the nation celebrated, the media captured a smiling Anderson family joyously reunited. But the truth was far darker. Plagued by PTSD, Terry was a moody, aloof, and distant figure to the young daughter who had long dreamed of his return—and while she smiled for the cameras all the same, she absorbed his trauma as her own. Years later, after long battles with drug abuse and mental illness, Sulome would travel to the Middle East as a reporter, seeking to understand her father, the men who had kidnapped him, and ultimately, herself. What she discovered was shocking—not just about Terry, but about the international political machinations that occurred during the years of his captivity. Sulome tells moving stories from her experiences as a reporter in the region and challenges our understanding of global politics, the forces that spawn terrorism and especially Lebanon, the beautiful, devastated, and vitally important country she came to love. Digging into the past, Sulome recounts how she long held her father’s place in history at arm’s length. Despite her intelligence and talent, Sulome acted out her psychological pain throughout her adolescence, getting expelled from boarding school and embarking on a painful road of drug abuse and crippling self-hatred. Only when she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a serious mental illness, did the missing pieces of the puzzle fall into place. As she began to recover from her condition, she chose to pursue the same career as her father, in the country where almost seven years of his life were stolen, precipitating a dramatic return to the past. In her quest, Sulome interviews many of the key figures tied to the events, including her father’s colleagues at the AP as well as former U.S. government officials and intelligence agents. She interviews such figures as Oliver North and the shady Lebanese editor who broke the story about the Iran-Contra scandal tied to the hostage crisis. At the end of this intricate journey, Sulome’s reporting culminates in extended interviews with one of the men who played a role in her father’s kidnapping. She conducts meetings with shadowy figures in the back alleys of Beirut and a dangerous Lebanese prison, taking her digital recorder places that could get her killed. In the process, she grows to love Lebanon in all its damaged beauty and cultural complexity, and THE HOSTAGE’S DAUGHTER becomes an urgent call for an understanding of Lebanon, its tenuous peace, and the key role it plays in the region. However it is also meant as a reminder to politicians and political actors that their choices are not without consequences. The people caught in the crossfire of war are not chess pieces, and political decisions have long-term effects on individual lives.