Taken hostage by FARC guerrillas in the Colombian jungle, Clara Rojas survives six years of captivity, a harrowing forced birth, and the wrenching separation from her infant son Emmanuel in a powerful true story of endurance, motherhood, hope, and miraculous reunion.
On a fateful day in February 2002, campaign manager Clara Rojas accompanied longtime friend and presidential hopeful Ingrid Betancourt into an area controlled by the powerful leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Armed with machine guns and grenades, the FARC took them hostage and kept them in the jungle for the next six years.
After more than two years of captivity deep in the Colombian jungle, surrounded by jaguars, snakes, and tarantulas, miles from any town or hospital, Clara Rojas prepared to give birth in a muddy tent surrounded by heavily armed guerrillas. Her captors promised that a doctor would be brought to the camp to help her. But when Rojas went into labor and began to suffer complications, the only person on hand was a guerrilla wielding a kitchen knife. The guerrillas drugged Rojas with anesthetic while one of them slit open her abdomen. Her son, Emmanuel, was born by amateur cesarean section in April 2004. His survival was miraculous, but her joy was soon cut short when the FARC took him from her when he was only eight months old. For the next three years, Clara was given no information about him, but her desire to one day see him again kept her alive. In early 2008, Clara was finally liberated and reunited with her son—to whom this book is dedicated.

- 256 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Chapter 1: Dispatched from Freedom
- Chapter 2: My Mother
- Chapter 3: The Day Before the Kidnapping
- Chapter 4: The Day
- Chapter 5: The Day After
- Chapter 6: The Jungle
- Chapter 7: Night
- Chapter 8: The Guerrillas
- Chapter 9: A Sense of Decency
- Chapter 10: Friendship
- Chapter 11: Escape
- Chapter 12: The Unraveling of a Friendship
- Chapter 13: Solitude
- Chapter 14: Fasting
- Chapter 15: Faith
- Chapter 16: Doubt and Anxiety
- Chapter 17: Pastimes
- Chapter 18: Motherhood
- Chapter 19: Emmanuel
- Chapter 20: With a Baby in the Camp
- Chapter 21: The Trek
- Chapter 22: Christmas
- Chapter 23: The Long Separation
- Chapter 24: Waiting
- Chapter 25: Murmurs of Freedom
- Chapter 26: On the Road to Freedom
- Chapter 27: Operation Emmanuel
- Chapter 28: The Reunion
- Chapter 29: Readaptation
- Chapter 30: Time Lost
- Chapter 31: Forgiveness
- Chapter 32: A New Tomorrow
- Acknowledgments
- Copyright
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