Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors Book

"[The survivors] had neither sensationalized nor sentimentalized their own experience and it seemed important for me to tell the reader what they had told me in the same 'matter-of-fact' manner." -Piers Paul Read
I remember watching the film adaptation of this book when I was quite young, and being so impressed with the resilience of the human spirit, and the desire to live. This book surpassed the film, because Read did such a great job of involving the reader in the whole ordeal, including the plane crash survivors, their families, and the efforts others made to keep searching for the victims even when the odds of survival were dismal.

This edition had interviews with the author and two survivors thirty years after the publication of the book. It's really hard for me to believe that Read was only thirty-one years old when he was selected for this great project, even though he'd previously only written fictional novels. I also love that it was extremely fact based. Nowhere in this book is the reader told what they should feel about sensitive subject matter, and yet it was told in such a way that I felt involved-a spectator and visitor to the stranded fuselage that served as home to the survivors. I'm glad I read this before I read Nando Parrado's personal memoir about the ordeal, Miracle in The Andes, although it will probably be some time before I can recircle this event. It really moved me to the core. Definitely a compelling read. Inspirational and gut wrenching.

"We all have our own mountains, and it's important to remember that no matter how bad things are, one can always overcome them and more so, one must never forget that they can always be worse. It's important to value the small things in life." -Alvaro Mangino, one of the sixteen survivors