Rescue My Child: The Story of the Ex-Delta Commandos Who Bring Home Children Abducted Overseas

Traces four heroic missions undertaken by an extraordinary group of ex-Delta Force commandos who have rescued children illegally abducted overseas by their fathers. 75,000 first printing. Major ad/promo. Tour.

This account of four rescues of American children from foreign lands is more gripping than many fictional thrillers. Delta Force is an Army commando unit familiar with all sorts of clean and dirty fighting tactics; Corporate Training Unlimited (CTU) is a private company composed of veterans of this group, a firm that undertakes missions which may not fall strictly within the limits of other countries' laws. Livingstone (The War Against Terrorism) details three cases of the children of American mothers and Muslim fathers saved from abduction to Tunisia, Jordan and Bangladesh, and one case of the offspring of American parents spirited to South America; these expeditions, we are shown, took place amid much cloak-and-dagger maneuvering and high adventure. Although CTU claims to have lost money on almost all of these rescues, its members interviewed here never attempt to present themselves as altruistic idealists. Photos not seen by PW. TV movie rights to NBC; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Parental kidnapping is always sad, and the stories here of American childen taken abroad by their foreign-born fathers are shocking. While it will undoubtedly be a best seller (especially with a scheduled NBC television series), this book bristles with machismo and ethnocentrism that can be expected to provoke a backlash from foreign governments. While we regret the sad plight of the mothers, we read here one-sided accounts of women who married men they scarcely knew, whose cultures they didn't remotely understand. Not all foreign spouses are depraved religious fanatics, nor are all Turkish-type toilets dirty. The international community is enacting covenants to cover such cases, but in the meantime we must work to revise our concept of "ownership" of children and start giving them rights of their own. This book will make waves, but Betty Mahmoody's For the Love of a Child ( LJ 8/92) is better.
- Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.