The breathtaking true story of a young woman’s terrifying experience of a hijack.
Warm from the memory of a five week trip around India, Catherine Hill and her boyfriend are happy to be on a plane flying home to Milan. They dream of decent Italian food, and an exciting future together as they wearily climb on board the Pan-Am jumbo at four o’clock on a Friday morning at Bombay airport. Briefly opening their eyes as the plane touches down in Karachi for a fuel and passenger stopover, they little imagine the tragedy that is about to unfold and the merciless twist life has reserved for them and many of their fellow passengers.
Within a few minutes, four hundred people on their flight are sitting bolt upright in their seats with their hands over their heads and hearts pounding in their chests as four PLO terrorists hurl orders down the aisles and a passenger is shot dead and thrown out on the tarmac. Twenty-two passengers are murdered and more than one hundred injured including Catherine who is near fatally wounded. Her boyfriend saves her life by dragging her, bleeding heavily, away from the plane despite his own injuries. Her body, her self image and serenity are blown apart.
Over the following years Catherine has to pull out every resource she has, physical, psychological, emotional and financial to reclaim her life and to accept what cannot be changed. Twenty-five operations around the world, two court cases on either side of the Atlantic together with her partner, keep her incessantly busy until there comes a natural end to all her fighting. It is only then that she must face her greatest challenge . . .
