First published 2010
Richard Phillips commands the Maersk Alabama, a cargo vessel transporting food supplies for the World Food Program. The fifty-three-year-old Vermont native expects another routine voyage until armed Somali pirates storm his ship. Phillips refuses to let his crew become victims. He offers himself as a hostage to secure their freedom. The pirates accept his trade and force him onto a small lifeboat. For five days, Phillips endures death threats, mock executions, and brutal heat while trapped with his captors off Somalia's lawless coast. He draws on years of maritime experience and personal resolve to stay alive. The pirates escalate their psychological warfare, but Phillips fights back with his own survival tactics. Navy SEALs track the lifeboat as tensions reach a breaking point. This account reveals how one man's split-second decision to protect his crew launched him into a life-or-death struggle that tested every limit of his endurance and courage.
Genres: biography, historical-fiction, adventure, action
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: hostage-situation, survival
Setting: Somalia, Maersk Alabama
Period: 21st-century
304 pages · Hardcover · Hyperion
Content warnings: death, violence