Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience

Finalist for the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award in Nonfiction Finalist for the 2026 International Book Award in Autobiography/Memoir Finalist for the 2026 International Book Award in Nonfiction: Creative On 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 Hostage: 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.