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Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience
Not yet published
Expected 1 Mar 26On September 6, 1970, twenty-year-old Mimi Nichter was on a flight home to New York from a summer in Israel when armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine crash-landed her plane in a remote desert in Jordan. Passengers were held on board for six days in sweltering heat without flushable toilets or running water. Most were sent home, but Mimi—accused of being an Israeli soldier—and thirty-one others were held hostage in Amman, fearing for their lives as a violent civil war erupted around them. In A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience, Mimi recounts her survival of the hijacking of Trans World Airlines Flight 741, the first incident of international terrorism and one of the most significant events in aviation history. After her dramatic release, Mimi returned to college a different person. Plagued with terrifying memories, she silenced her experience. One year later, striving to live in the present, she backpacked across Africa and Asia with her boyfriend and in doing so found a path forward, but her buried trauma resurfaced each time a new global hostage crisis occurred. Mimi finally realizes that to fully heal, she must explore how this trauma, and her silence about it, has shaped her life. Told with courage and empathy, Hostage is the story of how one’s strength and humanity can flourish even in the most fearful and untenable circumstances.
- GenresMemoir
Kindle Edition
Expected publication March 1, 2026
2 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
About the author
Mimi Nichter
8 books7 followersMimi Nichter, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology, where she holds joints appointments in the College of Public Health and the Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences. She is a cultural and public anthropologist who studies core concerns in contemporary American society. Her ethnographic research primarily focuses on adolescents and young adults. She is the author (or co-author) of four books. Her first book, Fat Talk, received the prestigious Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, for a book that makes anthropology meaningful and accessible to a broad public audience. Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience is her first memoir.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 21, 2025
Hostage is a moving and meaningful book, and the timing couldn't be more important. Mimi Nichter takes a personally traumatic event and crafts it into a world-view revelation of humanitarian perspective.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
There are all kinds of blogs on how to be a good author but very few on how to be a good reader. The author-reader bond is a study in symbiosis. The author must be willing to be vulnerable and scrupulously honest, particularly when writing a memoir. And the reader must be capable of surrendering all barriers and twin with the author in sharing an experience that may shake them to the very core.
Which brings me to this review. When Trans World Airlines Flight 741 was hijacked on September 6, 1970, it represented a jarring halt of innocence for Boomers – particularly Jewish ones. Suddenly, the carefree world of flying felt dangerous and unpredictable. The rants against Israel and the singling out of Jewish passengers became uncomfortably personal. Even more so when I discovered a classmate in my very large high school was among the hostages.
I knew Mimi Nichter (nee Beeber). Everyone at my high school did. She was relentlessly cheery, positive, and visible on just about every student government committee and school activity, or so it seemed. I imagined her leading the hostages in a rousing chorus of Kumbaya and keeping up their spirits. I hadn’t heard anything about her in decades, but I when I heard about her memoir, I suspected it would be about resilience and triumphing over any circumstance. I asked for an advance reader’s copy, figuring I’d read it quickly.
Three days later, I was reading slowly, savoring each word, spellbound, and wanting to tell every reader I know, “You must read this. Really. You must!” It shook me to the core. And it made me realize I knew nothing about the girl I knew in high school, nor did I know about what trauma and courage was about, in all my years of living.
First, the book is written astonishingly well. Writing is a very vulnerable kind of thing, intensely personal and intimate, and frankly, most writers don’t have the guts to do it (the last time I read a book so intimate was the 2013 memoir Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala).
Mimi is only 20 when she boards the flight, believing she will be home in hours, wearing a mini dress that will leave her physically and psychologically exposed in the days ahead. In her carry-on bag, she carries an Israeli army jacket that is given to her by a friend there, and photos of herself posed with him and others from the Israeli army. The Palestinian Liberation Front guerillas view her as an Israeli.
Others are released. She is not. She spares us nothing. She gets her period. There is no way to communicate what she needs to keep the blood from running down her leg. The plane heats up to 120 degrees and the toilets let forth an unbearable stench. Food is sparse and toiletries, are unavailable. Men are removed from the plane, including a new friend who has helped keep her spirits up, and no one knows their fate. A gun is cocked to her head as she is questioned about her suspected Israeli ties. When she is freed from the plane, she remains a hostage in an apartment in Amman, smack dab in the middle of a raging civil war and not knowing from one moment to the next whether she will live or die.
But living with precarity and uncertainty is one part of Mimi’s story. Another is her quest to become the archaeologist of her past, where deep feelings were unextracted and she was trained to retort that “everything was fine” whenever asked. And to be the architect of her future and take her place as a global citizen, working through the fears and bravely being able to share her one true story.
In her preface, Mimi Nichter quotes Soren Kierkegard: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” It’s a perfect summarization of Hostage. Do yourself a favor. Read this book. Share it with others. It’s a marvel. Thank you to Potomac Books for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
Which brings me to this review. When Trans World Airlines Flight 741 was hijacked on September 6, 1970, it represented a jarring halt of innocence for Boomers – particularly Jewish ones. Suddenly, the carefree world of flying felt dangerous and unpredictable. The rants against Israel and the singling out of Jewish passengers became uncomfortably personal. Even more so when I discovered a classmate in my very large high school was among the hostages.
I knew Mimi Nichter (nee Beeber). Everyone at my high school did. She was relentlessly cheery, positive, and visible on just about every student government committee and school activity, or so it seemed. I imagined her leading the hostages in a rousing chorus of Kumbaya and keeping up their spirits. I hadn’t heard anything about her in decades, but I when I heard about her memoir, I suspected it would be about resilience and triumphing over any circumstance. I asked for an advance reader’s copy, figuring I’d read it quickly.
Three days later, I was reading slowly, savoring each word, spellbound, and wanting to tell every reader I know, “You must read this. Really. You must!” It shook me to the core. And it made me realize I knew nothing about the girl I knew in high school, nor did I know about what trauma and courage was about, in all my years of living.
First, the book is written astonishingly well. Writing is a very vulnerable kind of thing, intensely personal and intimate, and frankly, most writers don’t have the guts to do it (the last time I read a book so intimate was the 2013 memoir Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala).
Mimi is only 20 when she boards the flight, believing she will be home in hours, wearing a mini dress that will leave her physically and psychologically exposed in the days ahead. In her carry-on bag, she carries an Israeli army jacket that is given to her by a friend there, and photos of herself posed with him and others from the Israeli army. The Palestinian Liberation Front guerillas view her as an Israeli.
Others are released. She is not. She spares us nothing. She gets her period. There is no way to communicate what she needs to keep the blood from running down her leg. The plane heats up to 120 degrees and the toilets let forth an unbearable stench. Food is sparse and toiletries, are unavailable. Men are removed from the plane, including a new friend who has helped keep her spirits up, and no one knows their fate. A gun is cocked to her head as she is questioned about her suspected Israeli ties. When she is freed from the plane, she remains a hostage in an apartment in Amman, smack dab in the middle of a raging civil war and not knowing from one moment to the next whether she will live or die.
But living with precarity and uncertainty is one part of Mimi’s story. Another is her quest to become the archaeologist of her past, where deep feelings were unextracted and she was trained to retort that “everything was fine” whenever asked. And to be the architect of her future and take her place as a global citizen, working through the fears and bravely being able to share her one true story.
In her preface, Mimi Nichter quotes Soren Kierkegard: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” It’s a perfect summarization of Hostage. Do yourself a favor. Read this book. Share it with others. It’s a marvel. Thank you to Potomac Books for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Author
What happens when you lose your freedom because of what you represent to someone else?
In 1970, Mimi Nichter was a 20-year-old university student returning from a summer on a Israeli Kibbutz when her TWA flight to New York was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLA). Diverted to the Jordanian desert, her plane was soon joined by two others, igniting a hostage crisis that captured international attention and transformed Nichter from a relatively carefree student to a woman who learns the mere fact of her parentage has reduced her to an enemy of the Palestinian people—in the eyes of her captors.
Raised in a conservative Jewish family, Nichter viewed herself as an activist dedicated to ending the Vietnam war and injustice in the United States. To the PFLA, she was a high-value hostage, a Jewish American.
Taken from the planes to a refugee camp to central Amman, where civil war would soon break out, the hostages were separated, interrogated at gunpoint, never sure how much food they would have or whether the outside world had forgotten them.
After her media-saturated return home the author discovers her time as a hostage has opened a gulf between her and her activist friends, some of whom view her capture by genuine revolutionaries as an enviable adventure.
In this era before post traumatic stress disorder had a name, those who had been through similar horrors were encouraged to forget, a paradigm reinforced in Nichter’s family. Yet recovery from her ordeal is not the primary focus of Hostage, which ends with the author’s difficult decision to get back on a plane, and, years later, a reunion with her fellow hostages who have all “moved on” in different ways.
During her captivity, the author tells us she receives what amounts to her first real education on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from two of her female captors. This surprised me, until I realized I was filtering the author’s experience through my own lens. Although Hostage takes place in the context of an ongoing conflict, it is about a very specific time and place. What was a relatively new state of affairs in 1970 feels entrenched over 50 years later, much like the airport security era the hijacking helped to bring about.
With it’s close in look at the relationships between captives and captors, Hostage added another layer to my understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by humanizing both sides. But the real story for this reader takes place in the latter half of the book as the author returns home, tries her best to forget her time in the Jordanian desert, and ultimately discovers that healing must include reconciling her youthful self concept with the experience of being held captive because of what she symbolized to someone else.
In 1970, Mimi Nichter was a 20-year-old university student returning from a summer on a Israeli Kibbutz when her TWA flight to New York was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLA). Diverted to the Jordanian desert, her plane was soon joined by two others, igniting a hostage crisis that captured international attention and transformed Nichter from a relatively carefree student to a woman who learns the mere fact of her parentage has reduced her to an enemy of the Palestinian people—in the eyes of her captors.
Raised in a conservative Jewish family, Nichter viewed herself as an activist dedicated to ending the Vietnam war and injustice in the United States. To the PFLA, she was a high-value hostage, a Jewish American.
Taken from the planes to a refugee camp to central Amman, where civil war would soon break out, the hostages were separated, interrogated at gunpoint, never sure how much food they would have or whether the outside world had forgotten them.
After her media-saturated return home the author discovers her time as a hostage has opened a gulf between her and her activist friends, some of whom view her capture by genuine revolutionaries as an enviable adventure.
In this era before post traumatic stress disorder had a name, those who had been through similar horrors were encouraged to forget, a paradigm reinforced in Nichter’s family. Yet recovery from her ordeal is not the primary focus of Hostage, which ends with the author’s difficult decision to get back on a plane, and, years later, a reunion with her fellow hostages who have all “moved on” in different ways.
During her captivity, the author tells us she receives what amounts to her first real education on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from two of her female captors. This surprised me, until I realized I was filtering the author’s experience through my own lens. Although Hostage takes place in the context of an ongoing conflict, it is about a very specific time and place. What was a relatively new state of affairs in 1970 feels entrenched over 50 years later, much like the airport security era the hijacking helped to bring about.
With it’s close in look at the relationships between captives and captors, Hostage added another layer to my understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by humanizing both sides. But the real story for this reader takes place in the latter half of the book as the author returns home, tries her best to forget her time in the Jordanian desert, and ultimately discovers that healing must include reconciling her youthful self concept with the experience of being held captive because of what she symbolized to someone else.
December 10, 2025
It’s September 1970. Mimi Beeber, a twenty-year-old college student and anti-war activist, rushes to catch her flight home to the East Coast after a summer spent picking pears on a communal farm in Israel. She is soon trapped in the nightmare of the boldest political airplane hijacking ever carried out until that time by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And while governments and political groups spar in the background, she remains imprisoned on the grounded TWA Flight 741 with 11 crew members and 143 other passengers, including children and babies. The hostages are surrounded by miles of barren desert, electricity shut down, heat rising, food and water doled out sparingly. A week later, Mimi is transported and trapped in a stifling apartment in Amman, Jordon where, as war explodes outside her barred window, the stakes increase day by day for her and the many still kidnapped passengers.
This intimately narrated memoir is told with sensitivity and compassion for the individuals forced together for survival. Mimi makes community with the strangers who share her predicament. And hears the personal stories of guerrilla members who carry out this extreme mission, hoping to reclaim their families’ homes and escape the dire poverty and powerlessness of their stateless condition.
Ultimately, “Hostage” is a timely and compelling story of how one young woman finds her way back into the world and makes a life of meaning after a brutal ordeal.
This intimately narrated memoir is told with sensitivity and compassion for the individuals forced together for survival. Mimi makes community with the strangers who share her predicament. And hears the personal stories of guerrilla members who carry out this extreme mission, hoping to reclaim their families’ homes and escape the dire poverty and powerlessness of their stateless condition.
Ultimately, “Hostage” is a timely and compelling story of how one young woman finds her way back into the world and makes a life of meaning after a brutal ordeal.
November 23, 2025
Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience, by Mimi Nichter, is a gripping story, told with grace, humility and compassion. I found Nichter’s straightforward prose immediately captivating and compelling. She tells her story without one bit of self-pity, just raw honesty. Nichter manages to walk a delicate line examining and affirming her Jewish identity, while not adopting dehumanizing rhetoric. Her understanding of her captors is similarly nuanced. She does not excuse their violence and anger, yet never loses sight of their humanity—thus maintaining her own in the face of brutality. I would have liked for Nichter to have drawn a bright line from the horrors of wounded Palestinian children she witnessed in 1970 Jordan, to the present mutilation of children ongoing in Gaza, but she leaves it to readers to connect those dots. This book is a fascinating read, and offers a meaningful contribution to our understanding of then and now. Hostage kept me completely engrossed from beginning to end.
November 28, 2025
Hostage is a book that will keep you glued in your chair as you smell, taste, hear and see what it feels like to be held captive, how life can turn without notice and threaten your very existence. But you’ll know you’re safe in capable hands as Nichter's exquisite story-telling ability keeps you hoping for the best, fearing the worst. Her clear, accessible prose gives the reader insight into her integrity, her refusal not to tell less than the truth about the physical and psychological struggles she faced during those harrowing days. With unflinching honesty she asks herself the hard questions which had me asking, "What would I do under those circumstances?" Here’s a book fifty years coming into fruition, yet it’s a book for these times of world-wide uncertainty and volatility in which we, as Nichter shows us, must widen our lens, look deeply at our own biases, then hold ourselves and all humanity accountable with wisdom and compassion.
November 22, 2025
I was fortunate to receive an ARC of this extraordinary book. It took me deeply inside the rare and profound experience of being held hostage. The vivid physical details (think airplane bathrooms!) brought Mimi Nichter's harrowing journey to life, and the psychological complexity should enable anyone to better understand the long term repercussions - and resilience - for those who have endured this kind of trauma. I appreciated the depth of cultural nuance which enhanced my knowledge of the Middle East conflict. Aside from all that it was an exciting read - a real page turner. Beautifully written in a tight style that enhances the suspense.
November 24, 2025
Hostage is the gripping product of 50 years of Mimi Nichter's forgetting and remembering having been on a hijacked plane and held hostage during the middle of a war. It is a witty and moving account of the hijacking and detention as they unfolded and her reactions and relationships with those who were held with her. It is not a political memoire; it is the story of a twenty year old girl's growing understanding of the long term human toll of war, both on others and on herself as an accidental participant. Mimi recalls moments of despair, hope, fear, humor, and ultimately resilience and a wide world view.
Review of advance copy received from Author
A powerful narrative about strength and vulnerability in the face of uncertainty. Though the author's experience of being a hostage is unique, the themes she addresses are relatable. I had yet to be born when this incident occurred, and yet I connected with the author's story and felt compelled by it. I felt like I was there with her, and I find myself thinking about the people she got to know along the way even after finishing the book. Despite differences in age, religion, and culture, the hostages found ways to comfort and support each other, building community under intense and terrifying circumstances. You have to read this book!
Review of advance copy received from Author
Nichter's memoir, Hostage, is an important contribution to understanding the perspective of those who have been taken against their will. There is a timeless quality about the experience and the author brings that to life in a highly readable book that held my attention and kept me turning pages until the end. This book takes us through the process of thinking back over the events in our lives and trying to make meaning of the seemingly incomprehensible. I received an ARC to review and I would very much recommend this book for understanding what it is like to be a hostage and what it is to contemplate any traumatic event and how affects the ultimate shape of our lives.
Review of advance copy
I’m a therapist and heard about Hostage through a friend who knows the author. I was able to borrow an advance copy, and I didn’t anticipate how deeply it would affect me. What struck me most wasn’t just the intensity of Nichter's experience itself, but how naturally it raises questions about resilience, what recovery from trauma actually looks like, and why some people are able to keep moving forward after horrific events while others are not. While reading the book, I found myself reflecting about my own clinical work a lot and recognizing themes that come up again and again with patients. Highly recommended!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Hostage by Mimi Nichter is a deeply personal look at the author's experience of being a victim of an airline highjacking in 1970. Nichter's memory of those days is vividly recalled. It's not lurid but very affecting. I've read two other books, which the author references, by others that were on the same ill-fated TWA flight and the experiences each had is so very different. The author's language is compelling and her pacing is quick but doesn't distract from the weeks she spend as a captive. It's an engrossing read. Thank you to #netgalley, #universityofnebraskapress and #potomacbooks for the opportunity to preview this book.
Review of advance copy
I first heard about Hostage when it was announced as a finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books, and I was fortunate to get an ARC from a friend. The memoir is an incredible account of personal resilience, pairing the experience of captivity with a gripping personal view of the early era of terrorism. Nichter offers striking historical context that illuminates the roots of many dynamics shaping the modern Israel conflict today, making it both emotionally powerful and intellectually quite interesting.
Review of advance copy
I was honoured to read and comment on an earlier draft of Mimi’s book last year. She is an accomplished author who inserts just the right details, however uncomfortable, to illustrate her experience and draw the reader in with insight and compassion. Fifty-plus years on, we recognise the resourceful young woman recalled from the point of view of a mature college professor who has lived a rich and eventful life after the events described. Insightful and relevant. I recommend the book—and Mimi Nichter— to you! I look forward to reading the published copy!
MARGE MATHER
Edinburgh, Scotland
MARGE MATHER
Edinburgh, Scotland
Review of advance copy received from Author
I received an ARC of this book and loved it! I really liked the way the author was able to describe in such interesting detail her weeks in captivity, including sharing her deeper feelings. I could hardly put this down as I was anxious to see how this all unfolded. An amazing story of courage, connection, and compassion. Although this amazing story is an event from long ago it continues to be so relevant today.
Review of advance copy
Got to read an advanced copy of this book from a friend who thought I would enjoy it, as I had numerous traumatic experiences when I was young which I have struggled with as an adult. Incredibly gripping and well written piece. I really liked how engaging the book was. Some scenes stuck with me even after I finished reading it a few weeks ago. Definitely a must read for anyone who has struggled to move forward from early life trauma.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Mimi Nichter draws us into her life as an inquisitive college student turned hostage during a harrowing hijacking in 1970. As her impatience to be freed morphs into panic, we feel her fear of death at the hands of her captors, even as she strives to understand their cause. Five decades later, world peace remains elusive, and the author’s long silence erupts into an unforgettable memoir.
Review of advance copy received from Author
In this deeply personal account of her experience as a hostage 55 years ago, Nichter gives an incredibly thoughtful and surprisingly detailed reflection of the 21 days following the hijacking of her US-bound flight, as well as a glimpse into her life in the years following her experience. Her book is an incredibly readable, thought-provoking, and timely narrative.
November 22, 2025
This book is epic! I was absolutely riveted and can't wait to read it again. Mimi Nichter was able to capture such details and nuance from her memories that it felt as if I was there throughout. I can't recommend this book more highly.
December 2, 2025
Oh my gosh— I got my hands on an advance media copy of this book. Started it last night and was bereft that I had to eventually go to sleep. It’s really good. I can’t recall the last time I was so gripped by a narrative. It doesn’t come out until spring, but I recommend pre-ordering now. Wowza.
Review of advance copy
Interesting read that tells what it was like to be on one of the very first hijacked planes in modern history and how that experience shaped the rest of the author's life
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews