"What is your name?" asked General Mohammad. "Matthew," I said. I had stopped saying Matt a while ago because it means 'dead' in Arabic. In 2012, Matthew Schrier was headed home from Syria, where he'd been photographing the intense combat of the country's civil war. Just 45 minutes from the safety of the Turkish border, he was taken prisoner by the al Nusra Front—an organization the world would come to know as the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Over the next seven months he would endure torture and near starvation in six brutal terrorist prisons. He'd face a daily struggle just to survive. And, eventually, he'd escape. In this gripping, raw, and surprisingly funny memoir, Schrier details the horrifying and frequently surreal experience of being a slight, wisecracking Jewish guy held captive by the world's most violent Islamic extremists. Managing to keep his heritage a secret, Schrier used humor to develop relationships with his...

ReviewA fast-paced, exciting read, with bigger-than-life heroes and villains. It was over much too quickly. -- Chris Rogers, author of Rage Factor, Chill Factor, etc., from the back cover Features a man of his word and a woman of convictions...[in] a world of shifting loyalties and deadly intrigues. -- Gwyneth Atlee, author of Canyon Song, Against the Odds, etc., from the back cover Set against Colombia's forbidding landscape, populated with memorable characters, the novel images a classic confrontation of good versus evil. -- Carlos Ledson Miller, author of Panama and Belize, from the back coverProduct DescriptionNovel: A CIA agent working under cover as a drug pilot in Colombia....A Colombian woman of good family, threatened by industrial intrigue and a plot to kidnap her....Unwillingly thrown together, they discover plans for an international terrorist strike against both their countries. Held captive and marked for death in a remote Andean village, they must find a way to prevent the terrorist attack.

"What is your name?" asked General Mohammad. "Matthew," I said. I had stopped saying Matt a while ago because it means 'dead' in Arabic. In 2012, Matthew Schrier was headed home from Syria, where he'd been photographing the intense combat of the country's civil war. Just 45 minutes from the safety of the Turkish border, he was taken prisoner by the al Nusra Front—an organization the world would come to know as the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Over the next seven months he would endure torture and near starvation in six brutal terrorist prisons. He'd face a daily struggle just to survive. And, eventually, he'd escape. In this gripping, raw, and surprisingly funny memoir, Schrier details the horrifying and frequently surreal experience of being a slight, wisecracking Jewish guy held captive by the world's most violent Islamic extremists. Managing to keep his heritage a secret, Schrier used humor to develop relationships with his...