My hijacking A personal history of forgetting and remembering

Historian Hodes (Mourning Lincoln) mixes memoir, psychology, and investigative reporting in this intimate account of the aftereffects of trauma. In September 1970, 12-year-old Hodes and her older sister, Catherine, were traveling unaccompanied from Tel Aviv to New York City when their plane and two others were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and forced to land in the Jordanian desert. Hodes remembers little of the seven-day ordeal ("When I thought about landing in the desert, I saw hazy pictures and heard faint voices," she writes) and eventually discovers that she and other passengers were drugged--the International Red Cross, brought in to help negotiate with the hijackers and care for the hostages, provided tranquilizers to help passengers cope with the stress of captivity. Afterward, Hodes's parents made little effort to further discuss the event, and it would be years before posttraumatic stress disorder became widely understood and therapy was prescribed for victims of terrorism. Hodes also delves into the frenzied reporting on the hijacking, noting that a widely circulated story that one of the hostages gave birth was false. Ultimately, she concludes that by encouraging her and her sister to forget about the hijacking, the adults in their lives contributed to their struggles "as grown-ups to maintain the intimacy that helped us survive back then." It's a poignant and perceptive study of what it takes to heal. Photos. (June)Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly identified the origin point of the author's flight.

A historian reckons with her own experience of a world-historical event. As a professor of history at NYU and award-winning author of Mourning Lincoln and The Sea Captain's Wife, Hodes has made a career out of examining the past. Here, she uses the tools of her trade to reconstruct an event from her childhood. In September 1970, 12-year-old Hodes and her 14-year-old sister, Catherine, were flying home to New York after spending the summer with their mother in Israel. Midflight, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine took control of the plane and forced the pilot to land in the desert in Jordan. Hodes spent the next week wondering about her fate--and the next 45 years trying to forget the experience. This book records her attempt to know what she couldn't remember and understand the global politics at play, which she could not fully comprehend as a child. Her search took her from her father's storage unit to the State Historical Society of Missouri, where the airline's archives are located and to the desert where she was held hostage. As she read an old diary, Hodes discovers that she was erasing the worst parts of her experience even as they were happening. At the Swiss headquarters of the International Red Cross, she discovered a message her father wrote for her and Catherine that was never delivered, but most of the recollections she sought remained submerged. Eschewing a linear narrative, Hodes revisits the same events multiple times, as if another trip back to a particular moment will prove illuminating. The fact that such revelations fail to appear makes the narrative feel repetitious and sometimes superficial. The book is most interesting when the author writes candidly about the psychic burden of staying silent and the difficulty of excavating long-buried memories. In a mixed-success attempt to understand her past, Hodes unearths trauma and contends with its aftermath. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.