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.