OVER THE EDGE, by GREG CHILD
THE TRUE STORY OF FOUR AMERICAN CLIMBERS’ KIDNAP AND ESCAPE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF CENTRAL ASIA
Random House, Inc.
www.villard.com
Before dawn on August 12, 2000, four of America’s best young rock climbers, the oldest of them only twenty-five, were sleeping in their portal edges high on the Yellow Wall, in the Pamir-Ali mountain range of Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia. By daybreak, they would be taken at gunpoint by fanatical militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekisstan (IMU), which operates out of secret bases sin Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and which is linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. The desperadoes—themselves barely out of their teens—intended to use their hostages as human shields and for ransom as them moved across Kyrgyzstan. They hid the climbers by day and marched them by night through freezing, treacherous mountains, with little food, no clean water, and the constant threat of execution. The four would see a fellow hostage, a Kyrgyz soldier, executed before their eyes. And in a remarkable life-and-death crucible over six terrifying days, they would be forced to choose between saving their own lives and committing an act none of them thought they ever could.
In Over the Edge, the four climbers—Jason” Singer: Smith, John Dickey, Tommy Caldwell, and Beth Rodeden—finally tell the complete story of their nightmarish ordeal. In riveting detail, author Greg Child re-creates the entire hour-by-hour drama, from the first ricocheting bullets to the climactic and agonizing decision the climbers had to make in order to gain their freedom and survival. Set in a powder-keg region of narcotics trafficking and terrorism, this is a deeply compelling book about loyalty and the unshakable human will to survive.
Greg Child is the author of three books, most recently the climbing memoir Postcards from the Ledge, A mountaineer who has summated K2 and Everest, Child lives near Moab, Utah
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