Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 07/01/2016 Gr 7 Up—Fifteen-year-old Anna has been living in Bahrain with her family while her father has been stationed there by the British Armed Forces. She is supposed to fly back to her English boarding school by herself. It is September 1970, and the plane is hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who force the pilot to land the plane at a deserted airstrip in the Jordanian desert and turn off the power. The guerrillas demand the release of imprisoned PFLP members, and they threaten to blow up the plane and kill the passengers unless their demands are met. Anna and her fellow passengers suffer from heat and cold, hunger and thirst, and the claustrophobic confinement of the plane as they wait to see whether they will live or die. It is implied that one of the guerrillas sexually assaults a young woman on the plane, but this is never made explicit. Moss was a teenager when she was on a plane hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in the fall of 1970, and this book is a slightly fictionalized version of her experience. This is an intense, realistic, and absolutely gripping story; many readers have never heard of this incident and won't know the outcome. It is not a one-sided treatment; a PFLP guerrilla tells Anna about the deaths of his family members and atrocities that occurred in Palestine. VERDICT An excellent choice for a book discussion or for a class on world history, and a thrilling read.—Kathleen E. Gruver, Burlington County Library, Westampton, NJ - Copyright 2016 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 09/01/2016 Fifteen-year-old Anna leads a divided life, traveling between her English boarding school and her family in Bahrain, where her father is stationed. The Middle East is a volatile place in 1970, however, and on this trip back to the UK, Anna’s plane is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and flown to a desert airstrip in Jordan. There Anna and her fellow passengers wait as hostages, hoping for their eventual release and fearing a tragic end. Moss bases the story on her own experiences as a teen aboard a hijacked airplane in 1970, and she does an excellent job with the details of the experience, effectively conveying the convergence of small annoyances (drunk fellow passengers), serious discomforts (the scarcity of food and water, the temperature rising above 100°F in the airplane’s metal fuselage in the desert), and large fears (one captor who clearly wishes to kill them all). Anna’s bonding with her seatmates David (an agemate) and Tim (a young boy tending his beloved little turtle) adds another dimension of emotional reality, as do Anna’s wary conversations with one of the hijackers. Ultimately, the book combines you-are-there reality with the shape of fictional narrative, and it’ll make for wide-eyed and suspenseful reading. An extensive epilogue describes Moss’ recent return to the site; a note differentiates the fact from the fiction. DS - Copyright 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Booklist - 09/15/2016 On September 9, 1970, 15-year-old Anna sets foot on a British Overseas Airway flight from Bahrain to London. Moments later, the plane is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The fourth in a series of recent hijackings, the 105 passengers on Anna’s flight are used to negotiate the release of prominent PFLP “comrade” Leila Khaled from British prison. Rooted in Moss’ real-life experience, the novel chronicles four devastating days in the Jordanian desert as Anna and fellow hostages are deprived of food, water, and electricity and enveloped by tanks, reporters, and rigged explosives—while the region erupts in civil unrest, and the world, including Anna’s frantic family, holds its breath. It can be hard to grasp the time line of the book’s major events, and some readers will crave an overview of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nevertheless, Anna’s agreeable first-person narration opens dialogue to interesting voices: freckled schoolboy Tim (and tough pet terrapin, Fred); cynical yet sensitive David; and Palestinian refugee Jamal. A unique glimpse into a pivotal point in world history. - Copyright 2016 Booklist.

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