Summary

The prologue opens with Amanda giving a few details about her life during the months she spent in captivity with Nigel Brennan. They named the houses where they were kept and often moved under cover of darkness. They could see other people but their faces were always covered, meaning no one would recognize the two hostages even if they had bothered to look. She briefly introduces the soldiers who held them captive while a “desperate, wheedling, multinational transaction” takes place against the backdrop of a holy war.

In Chapter One, titled “My World,” Amanda notes that she trusted that the world was basically a good place. When she was nine years old, her parents had divorced and her father remained in the town of Red Deer in Alberta, Canada, with his gay partner, Perry. Her mother, Lori, had moved Amanda and her two...