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NEW RELEASE
How to Survive Survival
A Guide to Turning Life's Hardest Moments into Meaningful Contribution for the World
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What if survival isn’t the end of a painful story, but it’s the beginning of a new one?
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In Surviving Survival, kidnapping survivor and New York Times bestselling author Jessica Buchanan asks the deeper question that comes after trauma, loss, and heartbreak: Now what? Through raw honesty, soulful reflection, and powerful storytelling, Jessica shares her own journey of rebuilding a life after surviving the unthinkable—and introduces readers to others who have turned their deepest wounds into a force for good.
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From survivors of violence, grief, addiction, and betrayal to warriors of chronic illness, military loss, and injustice, Surviving Survival highlights the resilient, everyday people who have chosen purpose over paralysis and contribution over collapse.
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Guided by Jessica’s RISE Framework—Reckon with the Pain, Identify the Impact, Seek the Meaning, Embody the Purpose—this book isn’t about moving on. It’s about moving through—and emerging with something meaningful to offer the world.
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Whether you're in the aftermath of something life-altering or standing beside someone who is, Surviving Survival will meet you in the messy middle and walk with you toward hope, purpose, and a life rebuilt on truth.
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New York Times Best Seller
A harrowing and heartwrenching memoir of humanitarian aid worker Jessica Buchanan’s kidnapping by Somali land pirates, her three months in captivity, her rescue by the SEAL Team Six, and her husband’s extraordinary efforts to help bring her home.
In 2006, twenty-seven-year-old Jessica Buchanan arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, with a teaching degree and long-held dreams of helping to educate African children. By 2009, she had met and married the man of her dreams, a native Swede named Erik Landemalm, who worked to coordinate humanitarian aid with local authorities in Africa. With dreams of starting a family, they moved from Nairobi to Somalia, and their future couldn’t have been brighter…

But on October 25, 2011, Jessica and a male colleague were kidnapped at gunpoint and held for ransom by an organized band of Somali land pirates. For the next three months, Jessica was terrorized by more than two dozen gangsters. She was held outdoors in filthy conditions and kept on a starvation diet while her health steadily deteriorated. Negotiations for ransom dragged on, and as the ordeal stretched into its third month, the captors grew increasingly impatient.

Every terrifying moment Jessica spent suffering in captivity was matched by that of her adoring husband working behind the scenes to deal with her captors. Finally, on January 25, 2012, President Barack Obama ordered a rescue operation by a team of twenty-four Navy SEALs. The team killed all nine kidnappers, with no harm to the hostages, who were quickly airlifted out on a military rescue helicopter.
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In riveting detail, Impossible Odds details Jessica and Erik’s mutual journey during those torturous months. Together they relate the events prior to the kidnapping, the drama of Jessica’s fight to stay alive, and Erik’s efforts to bolster and support the hunt for her while he acted as liaison between their two families, the FBI, professional hostage negotiators, and the United States government.