This book tells the harrowing story of two Christian missionaries, Martin and Gracia Burnham, who were captured by the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines, and who spent more than a year in captivity.  It would take all of their faith, bravery, and ingenuity to survive under the brutal Abu Sayyaf, and in the end, only one of them would come home alive.

At the beginning of the book a brief biographical sketch is provided for both Martin and Gracia.  Both of them were raised in intensively religious families.  Gracia's father was a pastor of a church and she graduated from Calvary Bible College in Kansas City, Missouri with a degree in Christian Education.  Martin's parents worked as missionaries in the Philippines.  The couple met each other while they were both students at Calvary Bible College.  They were married in 1983.

After they both graduated from college they decided to become missionaries just like Martin's parents had.  They joined New Tribes Mission and went off to a year of boot camp where they learned how to prepare for missionary life.  The book doesn't mention the denomination of Christianity that Martin and Gracia adhered to, but we can deduce that they practiced some form of Protestantism.  They were assigned to the Philippines in 1986.  Martin had a pilot's license and his job was to fly small planes to various missionary outposts and supply them with whatever goods they needed.  He would also fly sick people to hospitals.  The life of a missionary is not easy.  They had to find their own sponsors back in the States who would fund their missionary work.  New Tribes didn't even pay them a salary.  Everything had to come from sponsorships that they had to arrange themselves.

Their first few years in the Philippines were spent in the small town of Aritao on the island of Luzon.  Their first baby was born in 1987 and they would eventually have three children.  After a few years Martin was promoted to be the chief pilot for New Tribes Mission in the Philippines, a job which entailed frequent trips to various parts of the islands.  After Martin returned from a trip to the States in 2001, Gracia decided it might be nice to celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary at a nice resort.  She chose Dos Palmas resort on the island of Palawan.  The two of them arrived at Dos Palmas on Saturday, May 26, 2001.  Their room was situated on stilts above the water overlooking a beautiful bay.  The scene was so picturesque.  It was hard to imagine that their world was about to change violently.

Sometime during the early morning hours of Sunday, May 27, 2001 they heard a loud banging on their door.  Assuming it was one of the hotel staff, Martin opened the door only to be greeted by three men armed with M16 rifles.  They grabbed Martin and pushed him out the door even though he didn't have a shirt on.  They screamed at Gracia to move and she quickly dressed and was ushered out the door.  The Burnhams, along with other hostages, were pushed into a speedboat which was docked a short distance away.  After collecting twenty hostages the armed men took off in the speedboat.  The entire operation had taken only about thirty minutes.  The security staff at Dos Palmas did not put up any kind of a struggle.

It was only after they were onboard the boat that the Burnhams found out who their captors were.  They were the dreaded Abu Sayyaf, known as the worst terrorist group in the country.  Abu means "father of" and Sayyaf means "the swordsman".  Nor was this some random name.  The Abu Sayyaf had the nasty habit of beheading their enemies with a sword.  They were also proud to announce that they were affiliated with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist organization.  After an hour or so, one of the terrorists began collecting names and figuring out how much ransom each hostage was worth.  The initial hostages were as follows:

Of the twenty hostages, only three were Americans.  Thirteen of them came from rich families, which is exactly what the Abu Sayyaf was counting on.  When the Abu Sayyaf found out that the Burnhams were poor missionaries they declared that theirs would be a political settlement and would be dealt with last.  There were fifteen captors on the speedboat.  The main figures in the terrorist group were as follows:

Of these thugs, Solaiman and Abu Sabaya were the best English speakers and so the Burnhams found themselves communicating mainly with these two captors.  After spending a day bouncing over rough seas in the speedboat, they eventually linked up with a fishing boat which the Abu Sayyaf had captured.  The hostages were transferred onboard.  The terrorists allowed many of hostages to contact their families via satellite phone in order to arrange ransom payments.  On Thursday, May 31, 2001 the fishing boat arrived off the coast of Basilan Island, the main lair of the Abu Sayyaf.  The hostages were forced to wade onshore in chest deep water.  They climbed up a hill and rested in a nipa hut.  Later that day the hostages were allowed to take baths in a nearby stream.

The next day (June 1, 2001) as some of the hostages were bathing in the stream gunfire erupted.  The AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) had found them.  The terrorists were taken completely by surprise.  They began to return fire.  A few well placed AFP snipers could have picked off the terrorists one by one, but such was not to be the case.  The Abu Sayyaf got their hostages together and began running away.  The AFP chose not to pursue them.  The entire hostage crisis could have been over at that moment if the AFP soldiers had been professionally trained.  A squad of U.S. Navy SEAL's would have made short work of the amateurish Abu Sayyaf "warriors".  Instead, the hostage drama would drag on for more than a year.  There would be seventeen firefights between the AFP and the Abu Sayyaf during that time, and during each incident the AFP would show a complete disregard for the safety of the hostages.  They would fire indiscriminately at the Abu Sayyaf not caring whether they hit terrorists or innocent hostages.  The AFP's performance during this entire episode was dismal at best.

After hiking for a few hours the Abu Sayyaf group met up with a jeepney which was waiting for them.  The hostages piled in, only there wasn't enough space for all of them.  The three Dos Palmas employees (Sonny, Armando, and Eldren) were left behind as the jeepney took off.  They were the most expendable of the hostages since the terrorists could not expect to obtain a ransom for them.  And so a few hours later, Sonny and Armando were beheaded using a bolo knife.  The captors attempted to behead Eldren but they botched the job and he survived.  If the world had had any doubt before concerning the absolute barbarity of the Abu Sayyaf, the two decapitated bodies confirmed the depravity of the group.  Worse was to come.

The next day (June 2, 2001) the captors and their prisoners came upon a hospital in the small town of Lamitan.  They took over the hospital and now there were four brand new hostages:

But once again the AFP had found the group.  Another firefight erupted and the captors and their hostages were pinned down inside the hospital.  The gun battle lasted through the night and into the next morning.  It was at this point that the Abu Sayyaf got word that the ransom money for Reggie and Rizza had arrived.  They decided to let them go along with R.J., the son of Buddy and Divine.  Later that day the terrorists released Tess, Letty, and Janice in order to work on ransom arrangements.  There were now fifteen hostages including the four new ones who had been captured at the hospital.  The terrorists decided to make a break for it.  While running away from the hospital artillery rounds landed close and three of the hostages were wounded.  Divine and Buddy were injured badly and so the Abu Sayyaf decided to leave them where they lay.  Guillermo took some shrapnel in his foot but he could still walk.

Once again the AFP failed to pursue the escaping terrorists and so the hostage drama was allowed to continue.  The next few days saw the group hiking up and down hills trying to stay away from the AFP patrols.  An unmanned surveillance drone could be seen flying overhead searching for them.  A week or so later they were living in a house out in the boondocks of Basilan.  The Burnhams overheard Abu Sabaya talking on the satellite phone.  He appeared to be talking directly to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines in English.  Sabaya wanted the president to appoint a negotiator from Malaysia and not one of her own choosing.  He gave her a deadline.  If she didn't let in a Malaysian negotiator within seventy-two hours the Abu Sayyaf would kill one of the American hostages.  There were only three of them: Martin, Gracia, and Guillermo (who had been born in Peru and had only recently become a naturalized U.S. citizen).

On June 11, 2001 Guillermo was led away by a couple of the terrorists.  He was never seen or heard from again.  When his fiancé Fe asked the Abu Sayyaf what had become of him, they told her that he had gone with another raiding group.  Later that day the Burnhams overheard some of the terrorists joking among themselves about Guillermo pleading for his life.  The truth became inescapable: the dirty bastards had beheaded him in cold blood.

A few days later the ransom for Francis (Tess's husband) and Kim (Letty's daughter) arrived.  Before they were released Francis promised the Burnhams that he would help to raise funds for their ransom but it turned out to be an idle promise.  At about this time Abu Sabaya (whose name means "father of the war booty") explained to the Burnhams the Abu Sayyaf philosophy concerning hostages.  According to Sabaya, Muslims had the right to wage war against Christians.  Any prisoners they captured during the process constituted war booty and would be dealt with accordingly.  What this meant for the women captured was this.  The women would be parceled out to the various terrorists as unwilling mistresses.  The first to go was Reina who was forced to become the mistress of the leader of the group, Janjalani.  After a few months most of the other women hostages were forced to become mistresses of the Abu Sayyaf as well.

As the months wore on, the daily hardships began to take their toll on both Martin and Gracia.  They were forced to endure long hikes during the day in order to evade the AFP.  At night Martin was chained to a tree so that he wouldn't escape.  Their food was substandard and they were almost always hungry.  After three or four months Martin began to look more and more emaciated.  He eventually came to look like a walking skeleton.  Gracia began to have a crisis of faith.  Why had God abandoned them and left them to rot under these dreadful circumstances?  Martin tried to comfort her as best he could but there was very little he could do.  She began to have frequent crying bouts which particularly angered her captors.

The terrorists decided on a ransom of one million dollars U.S. for both the Burnhams.  But who was going to pay it?  New Tribes Mission had a policy against paying any ransom for its missionaries.  The U.S. government also maintained a strict policy against giving in to kidnappers (although they did post a five million dollar reward for information leading to the capture of the top Abu Sayyaf leaders).  One day, the Abu Sayyaf received word that a wealthy doctor in Manila named Doctora Rose had agreed to pay the ransom for the Burnhams.  But it turned out to be a ruse by the AFP to get the Abu Sayyaf to shift their position so that they could be more easily attacked.

Frequently as the terrorists and their prisoners hiked around Basilan they would come across abandoned villages.  The villagers would take to the hills whenever they saw the Abu Sayyaf coming.  That shows you how much respect the ordinary civilians of Basilan had for the terrorists.  Most of the civilians wanted nothing to do with them.  By the fall of 2001 the Abu Sayyaf had coerced their women captives into sham marriages.  Ediborah was "married" to Abu Musab even though she was already married.  Fe was "married" to Moghira and Angie was "married" to Abu Sabaya.  Eventually this new status resulted in Angie, Fe, and Sheila being released on November 15, 2001.  Joel escaped during a firefight on October 14, 2001.  Reina was released in September 2001 due to pregnancy.  Chito and Lalaine were released in July 2001 after their ransoms were paid.  That left only Martin, Gracia, and Ediborah as hostages.

By early 2002 negotiations were going on between the Abu Sayyaf and the AFP concerning the ransom for the Burnhams.  Abu Sabaya had agreed to give the local AFP general a twenty percent cut of the ransom, but the general wanted fifty percent.  The terrorist group and the AFP might be bitter enemies, but when it came to ransom money they both agreed to put aside their differences for a pile of cold, hard cash.  To make matters worse, the Burnhams eventually learned that the Abu Sayyaf were purchasing their armaments from corrupt supply officers within the AFP itself.  Finally in March 2002, Abu Sabaya announced that someone had agreed to pay 15 million pesos ($300,000 U.S.) for the Burnhams' release.  The terrorists received the money but then reneged on the deal and asked for another 30 million pesos.  The Burnhams along with Ediborah boarded a small boat and crossed the strait from Basilan to Zamboanga City in preparation for their release.

But the deal soon fell through and once again the AFP was hot on their trail.  For some strange reason Abu Sabaya, who was now leading the group, decided to flee northward up the Zamboanga Peninsula rather than returning to Basilan.  The only problem was that the farther they got away from Basilan the less familiar the territory became.  They were quickly spotted by the local residents who informed the AFP of their whereabouts and they would be forced to flee further northward.  This went on for several months until June 7, 2002.  On that day the Abu Sayyaf and their remaining captives reached a place near the town of Siraway where they decided to rest by setting up their hammocks.  It was raining that day.  They knew that the AFP never fought in bad weather or at nighttime so they assumed that they were safe.

All of a sudden shots rang out.  Bullets ripped through the group.  Once again the AFP was firing indiscriminately into the group.  Gracia rolled out of her hammock onto the ground but not before a bullet sliced through her right leg.  Martin was not so fortunate.  He took three rounds, one of them right through his chest.  He rolled out of the hammock and onto the ground.  By the time Gracia got to him he was already dying.  Ediborah was also killed by incoming gunfire.  Gracia decided to play dead so that the Abu Sayyaf would leave her.  And that's exactly what they did.  Abu Sabaya and the remaining Abu Sayyaf terrorists quickly fled the scene.  It was all over so quickly.

The AFP soldiers arrived on the scene.  They were horrified to learn that they had just killed two of the three hostages.  They quickly called in a helicopter to evacuate Gracia.  She had no choice but to leave her husband's dead body where it lay.  A half an hour later Gracia arrived at a military hospital near Zamboanga City.  It was under the control of the U.S. military who had arrived several months earlier to help the AFP combat the terrorists.  Boy!, it sure was good to see Americans for a change.  Gracia underwent immediate surgery to sew up the hole which the bullet had torn through her leg.

Later that day she was flown to Manila on a U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo plane.  She was driven to the U.S. Embassy where, to her surprise, she found that she was quite the celebrity of the moment.  Soon a whole bunch of people wanted to meet her and shake her hand, including the President of the Philippines, Mrs. Arroyo.  For Gracia the best part was being able to talk to her children, who were back in Kansas, on the telephone.  A couple of days later Gracia returned to Kansas to be reunited with her family.  She had gone through one of the most horrible ordeals that one could imagine over the preceding year.  But now she was finally home!

I must admit that I feel a personal connection to this story.  At the very moment on Sunday, May 27, 2001 that the Burnhams were being herded onto the speedboat by the Abu Sayyaf, I was sound asleep in a nipa hut at another resort only a few hundred miles away.  My wife, my mother, my brother, and I were staying at the Moalboal resort on Cebu Island.  There were no security guards of any kind there.  What would have happened if the Abu Sayyaf had decided to raid Moalboal instead of Dos Palmas?  This very well might have been my story instead of the Burnhams' story.  I probably would have mouthed off to the bastards and so I'm sure I would have wound up like poor Guillermo Sobero.  So this story sort of makes you stop and think.

Three and a half months before September 11, 2001 the rest of the world knew nothing about the global war against terrorism, but the Burnhams certainly knew about it.  They were living it.  September 11, 2001 taught the rest of us the lesson which the Burnhams had already learned the hard way.  And that is this: you cannot reason with an enemy who is unreasonable.  You cannot negotiate with an enemy who breaks all the rules of civilized conduct.  Your only option is this.  You must fight them, defeat them, and kill them anyway you can.  Unfortunately for poor Martin Burnham, the Philippine military was woefully unprepared to do any of these three actions and Martin ended up paying the ultimate price for their incompetence.  This book is riveting reading.  I give it four stars.