In August 2008 Amanda Lindhout traveled to Somalia, 'the most dangerous place on earth' as a reporter. On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road. Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda survives on memory, every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity, and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark.

Askar is raised in a small village my Misra after his parents died. But as an adolescent, he begins to feel suffocated there and goes to live with his aunt and uncle in the capital. Askar throws himself into radical political activity in the midst of the turmoil. As allegations of murder and treason are leveled at Misra, Askar's personal sense identity and Somalia's political boundaries will be challenged with a ferocity he could have never imagined.